Pete Buttigieg on Biden, Trump, Gaza, and His 2028 Presidential Plans

I'm starting to agree with Tucker Carlson on this fake gay thing.

No, I don't.

No, I don't.

Chasten has threatened, my husband has threatened to have my gay card revoked so many times.

This is just going to be the latest.

We're going to definitely have to report you after this one.

Hi, everyone, from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network.

This is On with Kara Swisher, and I'm Kara Swisher.

My guest today is Pete Buttigieg, the former U.S.

Secretary of Transportation and former Democratic Mayor of South Bend, Indiana.

Butigej bursts onto the national scene as a 2020 candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, and he's on the short list of Democrats expected to make a White House run in 2028.

But if he chooses to go for it again, he'll face a much more fractured Democratic electorate than he did five years ago.

The party is still divided over the war in Gaza and U.S.

support for Israel, the reasons behind the Democratic Party's waning support among rural working class and minority voters, and the continued fallout from Biden's decision to run again in 2024.

I've interviewed Pete Buttigieg several times, including when he was on the upswing and also post-his run when he was transportation secretary.

So I've had a lot of insight into his development over time, and he still remains one of the most interesting candidates around in the Democratic field.

He's also found a way to reach across the aisle in a way very few others have.

We recorded this interview on Wednesday, September 17th, just hours before The Atlantic reported on a second excerpt from Vice President Kamala Harris's upcoming book.

In it, Harris says Budajej was her first choice to be her running mate, but she decided it would be, quote, too big a risk for a black woman to run with a gay man.

Speaking to Politico Thursday, Buttigiege said he was surprised by Harris's comments and added that he believes in, quote, giving Americans more credit than that.

Ouch.

All right, let's get into my conversation with Pete Budig.

Our expert question comes from former Democratic-turned-independent West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin.

The interview with Buttigieg was recorded in front of a live audience at the University of Michigan's Gerald R.

Ford School of Public Policy.

Thanks to them for being such great hosts.

So stick around.

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Thank you for coming on on.

I really appreciate it.

I have lots to to talk about.

I'm going to talk about the state of the Democratic Party, gerrymandering President Trump, the recent assassination of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk, and a range of things.

And there's a lot to talk about, so we're going to dive right in.

And I will say, I'm really enjoying your train daddy look.

Those of you who know know what I'm talking about.

You know what I'm talking about.

You're setting a tone for our whole time together.

Exactly.

Yeah, yeah.

Do you know what I'm talking about?

Actually, no.

Oh, my God.

It's the Gilded Age.

Train Daddy.

Okay.

He's an icon for gay men, just so you know.

Okay.

I believe you.

Okay.

So let's get into serious issues.

I'll send you.

I'll send something.

Okay.

So it's been a week.

I'm going to get more serious since Charlie Kirk was killed.

You've condemned his killing, as most leaders in the Democratic Party have done, and you talked about the need to turn the rhetoric, but the opposite has happened, especially because,

including President Trump, Vice President Vance, are sort of ginning up anger continually.

So give us a sense of where you think the country is right now and where it's headed, or is it noise that is not really where the country is?

Well, I think in the days since it happened, and first and foremost, we still have to begin with the fact that a man was killed, that a family was robbed of a father, and that should never have happened, and that should never happen to anyone.

And I think that's the only sane place to begin.

I will say that we did see a truly bipartisan response, not a universal response by any means, but we saw leaders ranging from a conservative Republican like Spencer Cox, the governor of Utah,

to Bernie Sanders on the left saying things that really rhymed with each other about

why and how political violence is unacceptable, how terrifying it is that America is at this fork in the road.

And I do think that what's happened next in terms of the response out of the White House tees up a really challenging problem for those on my side of the aisle.

And the problem is how do we authentically live up to the things all of us or most of us are saying about doing our part to reject the use of violence and to turn down the temperature.

And at the same time, you've got to stand up to this stuff.

If the White House is saying that they intend to use this as a basis for cracking down on their political opponents, you have to stand up to that.

But I also think that that's less of a contradiction than it seems, that there are ways to be

politically forceful.

and reject the use of force.

And I think the way to think about it is that both of those things, our

to the way the White House is approaching this and our opposition to political violence, come from our commitment to freedom.

Part of what makes political violence a crime, not just against the target, but against the country, is that it deprives our whole country of the freedom to have open, honest, safe, free political debate.

And of course,

that's also the harm of any government and certainly our government using this or any other pretext to use the powers of the state to go after people, not because, or groups, not because they are physically dangerous, but because they are politically opposed to those in charge.

So I think those things sit together.

I'm surprised by the reaction?

Which reaction?

The White House reaction.

The first, I happened, yeah, when I heard it, I thought, okay, good beginning, and then, oh, no, this is not the same.

I mean, I wasn't exactly getting my hopes up for him to suddenly transform into a unifying leader who would bring us all together.

I mean, the simple fact is, even though the most important job of the president of the United States is to hold the American people together, he does not view this as part of his job description.

He said as much.

It's not important to him.

And so we saw what we saw.

Now, the other thing, of course, that I think is important is

that he didn't talk about the fact that there has been so much political violence.

directed against people who are left of center.

This same summer that is ending in September with the horrific killing of a conservative activist in Utah, Charlie Kirk, began in June with a nationalist

madman running around with a list of Democrats he wanted to kill, and he found some and killed them, Melissa Hortman and her husband in Minnesota and shot others.

So a partisan response to something that should horrify us on a bipartisan basis is wrong, it's bad, and sadly, it is unsurprising on the part of the president.

Why, from a political point of view, why do this?

Because it's continuing and the ants has continued to pretty much spew inaccurate statistics and just keep repeating it over and over again.

What is the strategy from your perspective, if you were them?

I'm doing my best to get into their heads

and imagine what they're trying to do.

I think for one thing, it's easier.

I mean, it would be difficult for them to acknowledge just how much political violence has been inspired by the right or to even acknowledge just that this has happened in ways that have aligned with either side.

But also,

part of their project is to assert total control over this country.

Not just lead the government, but control everything.

And

this is something that is enabling them to try to do that even more.

We've seen that sort of thing before.

I mean, history teaches us.

Some provocative incident then leads those in power to have a way to consolidate their power.

And,

you know, every step, if there's any cohesion, any pattern in what our president, this president does, it's everything he does is about consolidating his own power.

Will it work?

It could.

I mean, if he's actually able to use this as a pretext to undermine groups and people who are politically difficult for him, that are not in any way associated with this or any other act of violence, but are a political problem for him, given that you have a court that's unwilling to check his power and a Congress that is unwilling to check his power, that could happen.

Having said that,

It's also possible that something different happens, probably from the bottom up among the American people before it gets to Washington rather than the other way around.

But I'm thinking about the people that I was arguing over beers with in college who were libertarian or conservative.

Maybe we were arguing about guns, maybe we were arguing.

Sometimes we'd be arguing over something like, you know, the Clean Water Act.

And they would say, we can't have, that's tyranny.

It's too much power for the federal government to have, right?

And then, and I can be a little sarcastic about that, but then they would say something like, look, you go down this road, and sooner or later, someday, you're going to have massed federal agents walking down the street nabbing people because of op-eds, they wrote.

Well, joke's on me, right?

It didn't happen in the way they said it would, but something like that is happening right now.

So I'm trying to appeal to folks of that turn of mind and say this politically ought to be your Super Bowl.

It's actually happening.

Well, except that a lot of people are calling for cancel culture.

Like the people that originally had been so opposed to cancel culture, such as Attorney General Pam Bondi.

Yeah, it turns out they're against cancel culture selectively, which you just can't be in the same way that you can't be against violence selectively.

It's either right or it's wrong.

You recently said social media is clearly part of the problem in a big way when it comes to political violence.

Governor Cox from Utah said the same thing.

He used the term cancer.

It's obviously something I've talked about for, I think, about 20 years now.

I think you're both right, but we're not going to see any tech regulation anytime soon, especially since they've spent a lot of time

coddling President Trump with golden statues and million-dollar donations and things like that.

And putting your phone down puts the onus on the individual, not the companies themselves.

So talk about

how you change the social media equation.

Well, we can't let the companies off the hook, but we also, just before I get into that, I would say can't let ourselves off the hook.

So yes, we are being manipulated down to the brain chemistry level by companies and algorithms.

But we do have some level of agency that we ought ought to be smart about, in the same way that lots of things had to be done around tobacco.

But one of them was labeling and education and other things that then helped

people to make choices that were healthier.

I'm not saying you should have left it on the individuals.

Obviously, the companies were responsible.

But if you're just thinking about a broad spectrum, what are all the things we could be doing at the same time that would make a difference?

One of them is certainly let's think about anything and everything that we ourselves can control.

But

I agree that it's not fair to just expect the user, the individual, especially young users, to just shoulder that on themselves.

I'm not as pessimistic as you are about the possibility of some kind of regulation or rules here.

I get what you're saying, that they probably have a protector in the president.

They had a protector in President Obama, too.

Yes, in a different way and for different reasons, but yes.

But you know, back then it was that idea, okay, we don't know where this is going to go.

Let's let a thousand flowers bloom.

Now we know, right?

And I think a lot of us who had really high hopes for the democratizing power of social media 20 years ago or even 10 years ago have been humbled by what's actually happened.

But look, I actually think there's a really interesting,

I'm not going to say consensus, but a lot of strange bedfellows coming together around regulators.

Think somebody like Josh Hawley.

I can't imagine agreeing with him on almost anything.

But you have figures like him on the right, Spencer Cox himself, right?

The law they passed in Utah.

Now the companies are fighting it, but a law that would do something about that.

So I think if the American people turn on these companies, it won't be because of what they've done to harm our politics.

It'll be because of what they have done to harm our kids.

Correct.

But either way, it could happen.

What would you push?

You can't sue them.

There's no regulation against them.

They have unlimited power, unlimited money, and limited access now.

The attempts by the Biden administration to push back on them were met with loss.

I don't have all the answers, but some things are.

Which one of those many things would you do?

Well, the Utah approach is to have some controls on exposure.

I think that's a good place to start.

The rules that, again, are getting really interesting bipartisan support around phones in schools.

That's just things that can at least get some measure of control for the most susceptible and vulnerable users.

I do think, you know, whether it's returning to the now, I think, beaten to death conversation about Section 230 or some new frontier on that, we still have to talk about formal responsibility that companies bear.

Liability.

Yeah, yeah, which is how America, for better or for worse, solves most problems related to irresponsible behavior.

And I think we should think about it.

It sounds less like it has less teeth and it doesn't work on its own, but I do think like naming or labeling things can have a lot of power too.

I learned this

as somebody who was a watchdog on airlines.

We had rules that airlines had to follow that we came up with.

We had enforcement actions for violations when the airlines didn't follow the rules.

But actually, one of the most powerful things we did in terms of changing airline behavior was we just put a bunch of information out about like here red X's and green check marks on a website that let everybody know here's the airlines that will take care of you if you get delayed or

need a meal or a hotel or something, and here's the ones that won't.

I couldn't believe how powerful that was.

So I think all of these things have to travel together.

Did you, when you think about doing that, are you surprised by the shift of tech companies toward Trump, given the hostility they had towards the administration you worked in?

I think the shift was well underway by the time the Biden administration was in office, or at least by the middle of that time.

So by the end, I wasn't so surprised.

Early on, I was.

I mean, there were people who 10 years ago I met

when I was running for chair of the DNC, which means they weren't just Democrats.

They were Democrats who cared enough about

being a Democrat to care who the chair of the DNC is, who most people don't even think about on a regular basis, and went on to be Trump supporters or Trump fundraisers.

I mean,

that did shock me.

I think I overestated the extent to which they were serious about being libertarian,

because I always knew they weren't maybe quite where I was politically, but I imagined that what they really cared about was freedom.

And so to suddenly get on board with

an administration that has stripped freedoms ranging from the freedom to choose that they destroyed the first time around to the freedoms of speech and association that they're going after now.

And over what?

Because we did too many DEI trainings?

Maybe we did.

That doesn't make it okay to turn against...

free speech if you're a libertarian.

So how would you bring them back?

They're powerful in every single aspect.

And right now, Larry Ellison, he just bought CVS

via his son.

They're likely to try to buy CNN and Warner Brothers.

He's getting TikTok.

Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post, et cetera, et cetera.

They are consolidating power across many things.

How do you get them back?

Pretend I'm Elon Musk for a second.

Oh, geez.

What would you say to?

Let's pause.

Let's talk about it.

Because you did make fun of Elon Musk.

You said he's really sensitive.

Too bad he didn't get to go to the car summit.

That set him off.

Yeah, and look, we probably should have invited him to the car thing.

But

I want to bookmark the question of whether what we really need to do is to win them over, whether what we really need to do is have a policy framework where they can't dominate us.

But I do think there is a case to be made, at least for the rank and file of Silicon Valley, that's like, wait a minute.

Part of it's about the rule of law.

You're riding a tiger.

that sooner or later will eat you too.

Like, yeah, maybe you think you're benefiting right now because the president's too busy going after the easiest pickings, like universities or law firms that employ people who were inconvenient to him or broadcasters.

But you can't imagine that you're going to play his game and sooner or later he won't turn on you too.

So that's the leopard's will eat your face argument.

Yeah.

Okay.

I think there's also a case to be made that

you can't have a functioning business in the long term.

Because I think part of the answer to why they turned is that they are business people first and foremost.

Sometimes more interested in their business than in the citizenship that

I would hope would move.

Well, they want to live on Mars, so there's that.

But I do think the other question is, okay,

what else has to change for it just not to be like, remember, we've been here before.

I mean, we haven't been here before with social media, but

100 years ago?

Or 120 years ago, we would have been reading newspapers that were dominated by certain people who owned newspapers and railroads railroads at the same time.

Train Daddy.

Train.

If you will,

apparently.

So

I really got some, I got to Google some stuff after this.

You need to chat GPT, but I'm not going to go on.

These problems aren't like completely

some of these things that feel unprecedented are more precedented than we might think.

Okay.

What is not precedent is this idea, maybe it is precedent, that there's a vast domestic terror movement on the left and promise to use the federal government to crack down on it.

What are you most nervous about in that threat?

Sometimes they're just yammering on, other times they do have the power of the government.

Yeah, I mean, what I'm saying.

And they seem very enthusiastically going through their list.

I mean,

it's not hard to imagine a roadmap that goes from here where any 501c4 that challenges the president is described as a terrorist organization.

And again, again, we see that.

I mean, other countries, the ones we worry about becoming like, Russia, for example, this is what they do, right?

Putin doesn't say, like, I'm going to shut you down because I don't like you.

He says, okay, I don't like you.

I'm going to shut you down because you are a terrorist organization or because you didn't pay your taxes or whatever.

They come up with something that, at least on its face, as a fig leaf, is defensible.

And we are fast on a road.

toward that.

And again, that should horrify every conservative and every libertarian just as much as every progressive.

It doesn't.

Well, what are you most nervous about?

Right now they're attacking the University of California, one of the greatest education systems in the history of the world, actually, in terms of educating people.

And many other institutions here, everywhere.

There's not a university not under siege.

There's not a media company not under siege.

There's not a law firm not under siege.

Is there a line for you?

Is there somewhere where you'd be like, oh, no, no, no.

Now they're going after George Soros, which I thought they'd get to that first, first, but they haven't.

I think there's a lot of people waiting for some line, like some

indicator that goes off.

Or has it been crossed?

I don't think it works that way.

I think a hundred lines have been crossed that are already really bad, and I think there's more where that came from.

Nobody's going to just come down and tell us, hey, you just had an authoritarian breakthrough.

It's underway.

And the real question is, does it get consolidated?

Right.

Or does it get redirected and and disrupted?

Right.

And, you know, what most worries me is that the American people don't understand their own power.

I mean, obviously, Congress is just completely incapable of standing up to this president.

So the only thing that will really change is if people, especially people in Congress, who now believe that their political survival depends on going along with things that they know deep down are wrong, is replaced by an awareness that their political survival depends on doing things that are right.

We'll be back in a minute.

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Let's pivot to the state of the Democratic Party because one would imagine this would be the counterweight and specifically its credibility deficit.

I would call it fecklessness.

Others would use other terms.

On Meet the Press, let's go back a little bit.

You said that President Joe Biden, quote, should not have run.

It's been almost a year since the election.

You waited until Vice President Harris said the same thing in a book excerpt, said it was reckless.

I'm not going to say no shit, Sherlock, to you, but I'm thinking that in my head.

Well, first of all, I didn't.

I said something along these lines before that book came out.

But also, like, yeah, look, everybody got to that conclusion, including, by the way, President Biden, who took himself out of the race.

Sure.

Belatedly, we can say.

Okay.

Is it a position you've recently come to, or did you feel it at the time?

I'm going to be interviewing Vice President Harris in two weeks.

What about during it?

You were in that administration.

And I know that Scott and I on Pivot were talking about it a full year before that and got attacked really relentlessly by Democrats saying we needed to get on board.

And I was like, not on that train.

I'm not getting on that train.

Or you didn't understand the assignment.

Talk about from the inside.

What took so long for people like you and Vice President Harris and others to unequivocally say that he shouldn't have run?

Well, people like me were not consulted on the decision about whether he should run.

Sure, but you have eyes.

And what my eyes told me was that the sitting president of the United States and the leader of my party had made a decision that he was going to run and that our country faced a choice between President Joe Biden or President Donald Trump.

And it was not hard for me to know not just who I was going to vote for, but who I was going to do everything in my power to make sure won.

And while there's lots of things that hindsight tells you about how and when he made his decision to change course and the hundred or however many days it was of the Harris campaign, and I continued just as enthusiastically backing the Harris campaign and then the Harris Walls campaign as I did the Biden-Harris campaign.

And anybody who was part of making sure that they and not Donald Trump would want, anybody who tried to do that, I think should have their head held high because it was the right thing to do.

Was there a moment in that time period where you thought, oh, no, he should quit sooner?

I mean,

obviously,

all of us who saw the debate immediately began asking ourselves tough questions.

And I knew that he was asking himself tough questions

and eventually stepped aside.

I think that was a turning point for.

For you all.

I mean, even before the debate, polling showed a majority of voters were worried about his age.

I'd love to understand from the inside, like, what happened.

I get like.

I don't know which inside you mean, but because when they're like inside the room where he's deciding whether to run again, they're not calling

the Secretary of Transportation is not invited into that room.

Right.

But you're nearer than I was.

Potentially, yeah.

Definitely.

But to the extent that I was involved in the campaign, it was how do we make sure that this campaign and not the Trump campaign is the one that wins.

Aaron Powell, how does the party, though, then regain credibility with voters who are skeptical

by just blaming the Bidens?

Because that seems to be ⁇ I get why the Bidens did it.

I understand it.

I think the answer is to tell the truth.

Of what happened.

Yeah, and why we believe what we believe, right?

So, again, the truth, at least the truth that I lived, was that we had a choice between two candidates, two presidents.

It was not close who should be president between those two presidents.

And then we had a different choice when he stepped aside.

And it still was not close to me who should win and who should lose.

I get that, but during, I think I'm trying to say a very specific question, during that time period when there were worries, why didn't someone quit?

Why didn't someone say, go to him and say, listen, love you, but you got to get out?

Is that impossible to do in the current way things are?

It's not like you can just book a meeting and go in and tell him not to be president anymore.

Or maybe there's some people who could, like people in his family.

I don't know.

I don't know how that worked, but I know that enough people did.

that eventually he made that choice.

Well, it was Nancy Pelosi, which is on brand for her.

But I'm just interested in why that didn't happen sooner.

So then what happened is it was very quickly Vice President Harris.

Probably many people think far too quickly.

So every episode we get a question from an outside expert.

Here's yours.

Hello, this is Joe Manchin, and I would like to ask my friend Pete Boudig a question.

Do you believe, Pete, that the Democrats should have had a mini-primary of at least 30 days when Joe Biden decided not to run?

And do you think it would have helped or it would have been more harmful?

That's a good question.

That's former Senator Joe Manchin.

I I just interviewed him this week, and he kindly provided that.

I think it probably would have helped.

I didn't think that then.

Why?

I think I felt that we were so under the gun, that

every day mattered so much,

and that she was prepared to

not just come out running, but to take the organization that had been built over years and immediately carry it forward, that we just couldn't lose one day.

I think with the benefit of hindsight,

if there had been, if we'd invested those 30 days,

then

had she been the nominee, she'd have done so after consolidating the party in a competition.

And had she been unable to do that, then almost by definition, there would have been a stronger nominee.

But it's one of a million things that's a lot easier to say now, looking back with the benefit of hindsight than it was in the moment.

Is there too much cautiousness in the Democratic Party?

Obviously Trump doesn't have any caution.

Often, yeah.

I mean,

not that the answer is to.

Yeah, I mean, I don't think the answer is to emulate Trump, but

yeah, I mean, to take one example, like most of my Democratic colleagues still hesitate to go into venues and spaces that I think we need to be in where people might not be exactly on our side or even on the level.

But it's why, although it's happening more and more, like I remember getting like, not just feeling like I was one of the only ones who would go on Fox News, but having to defend going on Fox News.

Like people said I was

contributing to their business model and all kinds of reasons why I was actually,

some people said it was actively harmful to go onto Fox News.

Now I think it's relatively uncontroversial in the party that we should be there.

Well, it's funny they're not booking me as often as they used to.

They're obsessed with Gavin.

Oh, okay.

Well, as long as somebody's doing that.

But also into the kind of the online, look, most people younger than me aren't getting the majority of their news from any TV.

They're not really.

Oh, that's quite an agent.

And so obviously there's kind of an online expansion of that same principle.

But the principle is there.

And I think I would take the podcasts.

So, you know, I've started doing some of these podcasts that are like three hours long.

And

even if you intended to be on talking points for three hours,

it is just not possible,

which is risky.

It's a risk, and it's the kind of risk that a lot of people in the consultantocracy and the party tell you you shouldn't take.

Because you will definitely put a foot wrong in three hours.

You just will.

Do you think you're risk averse?

I think I'm less risk-averse about that than others who wouldn't do it.

Okay, let's talk about a topic.

Then you have a well-earned reputation as an effective communicator, 100%.

You got blowback for equivocating your Ask About Gaza in an interview on Pod Save America.

You now say you you would recognize a Palestinian state as part of

a two-state solution and the U.S.

should not pass another 10-year agreement with Israel on foreign military aid.

Did it take getting dragged online to clearly state your position on this issue?

And please more clearly state it for us.

Yeah, so on the specific issues,

there were three things that I spoke to.

One was a resolution about offensive weapons going to Israel.

And I believe, like a lot of Senate Democrats who voted for it, that that was an important step, something that I would support, even though I'm not in the Senate,

because it's one of the few things I could think of that would get the attention of Netanyahu in the conduct of the war.

So that's number one.

Number two, on the recognition of a Palestinian state.

I think that if you believe in a two-state solution, then by definition,

you believe in the recognition of a Palestinian state.

But that does not mean that you just turn around tomorrow morning and do it while Hamas is still in charge and with no security guarantees for Israelis who are living surrounded by countries and organizations, including Hamas, that are dedicated to wiping them out.

So, yes, it has to happen, but it has to happen as part of a negotiated, credible, and enforceable agreement.

And then, on the third policy issue, the MOU, in the past, we've had our security relationship defined by a, I think it's happened three times now, by a 10-year non-binding but important MOU between the U.S.

and Israel.

I'm not sure that's the right answer going forward.

I'm not saying I'm sure structurally what all the technical details of it should be.

What I am saying is by 2028 or 2029, we don't know what we're going to be looking at in terms of how the security relationship is structured.

I can tell you for sure right now that there should be a security relationship, that that should include the U.S.

maintaining its historic commitment to making sure that Iran or or anybody else is not able to achieve their aims of destroying Israel.

But that is a defensive goal, which is different from some of the things that the Israeli government has expected the American taxpayer or requested the American taxpayer to continue to support.

One of my students here named Zach wants to know, he asked me and sent me a note, if you still consider Israel a strong ally of the United States and if so, what line would Israel have to cross to lose your support?

So Israel is not behaving, obviously, as a good friend, but that's past the point, right?

The problem is that the Netanyahu government is perpetrating atrocities in Gaza.

Atrocity is the word you want to use.

Would you use the word genocide?

I have a lot of respect for not just the moral weight of that word, but the legal definition it represents.

And so out of deference to that, I'm not going to jump into that.

semantic fight.

But

the important thing is that the killing has to stop, the starvation has to stop, the war has to stop, and of course, the hostages need to come home, and Hamas needs to not be a threat to the people of Gaza.

Let me tell you why I equivocated.

Okay.

Well, you're good at it, but go ahead.

Thanks, I guess.

You're a good argument.

Anytime I talk about this issue, I'm mindful of the pain.

that people experience, even if they're not, it's not quite accurate to say they're on opposite sides of it, because so many people I know who are really, really concerned

about protecting Israel's ability to exist and separately, I want to say that, separately,

really concerned about the explosion of anti-Semitism on American campuses,

will experience when you say things, even things that I think they too would agree are inarguably true about what's happening in Gaza, if you say it in a certain way or you say certain things in a certain order, their worst fears about the abandonment of Israel or of

American Jews facing anti-Semitism are confirmed.

So one of the reasons why as somebody who does a lot of talking and a lot of politics,

I have rarely felt closer to my limits in terms of the tools that are available to build consensus and talk forthrightly about these issues than on this, is because I'm conscious of the pain that comes with talking about this, even when we are saying things that are clearly true, because it turns out if you say certain things that are true and don't say all these other things that are also true,

some people are inclined for very understandable reasons to assume the worst.

Certainly, but when Democrats talk about building back credibility as voters, it's actually framed around bringing back working-class voters, for example.

But we're in Michigan, a state Harris lost in part because of Arab and young voters who are furious about the Biden administration's support of Israel.

How do you win back credibility if you're worried about that?

I mean, a recent poll found 77% of Democrats think Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, and a UN inquiry concluded that it had.

How do you bridge that gap then?

Because again, like I said, same thing with Biden.

We have eyes, we can see.

How do you do that as a Democratic Party?

By naming all of the things that are all true and that collide with each other in messy ways, but are still definitely true.

And by the way, this is one, and who knows, even just between when we're sitting here and when people are listening to this podcast, what else will have happened on the ground.

But in the face of this ground invasion, you see a lot of Israelis standing up

and saying this is not certainly not helping the hostages.

This is not helping our security as the Israeli people, and it is wrong.

And so I think part of what we have to do, and it's been hard in the U.S.

politics for all kinds of reasons, but to speak about this as freely, as frankly, is possible in Israel.

There are sometimes things that I have read on the pages of the Jerusalem Post or Ha'aretz, Israeli papers,

that in the past people weren't willing to say in U.S.

politics.

And we have to, because they're true.

What would you state now if you were in a position of authority, you would do?

What would be one of the first things you would do?

It would be to make clear that the U.S.

is not going to subsidize just anything.

We're not going to let the Netanyahu government take American dollars and the credibility that comes with being an ally or partner of the United States and use it to,

for example, use starvation as a tool of war.

It was wrong.

And it's one of those things that is so wrong that all of the other things, which might also be true, just cannot possibly make it right.

And that does mean taking a look at the things that, which is why that resolution, even though I think it was symbolic, was important.

So I don't have all of the answers to something as vexing and

as just repeatedly brutal as the Middle East conflict.

But I think that the next president needs to be more willing to do that than any

previous president from either party.

You do understand where young voters are.

I've watched the shift happen in real time right now.

And the Democratic Party has to respond to that, presumably.

Yes.

So I'm going to move on to something else.

The Federal Government is set to run out of funding and shut down at the end of the month.

In March, Chuck Schumer decided to avoid a showdown with the administration.

He corralled enough Senate Democratic votes to help Republicans keep the government funded.

What about this time?

Should Democrats help Republicans keep the government open, or should it shut it down again?

And

what are the strategic benefits to both approaches?

Well, first of all, I don't want to buy into the premise that it is the Democrats who would be shutting down the government.

I get it, but they might be.

The Republicans are in charge.

Right.

They have the House, they have the Senate, they have the Presidency.

And if there's anything we know about this presidency, it's this attempt to assert and then expand its control over everything.

So if there is a shutdown, it will be because of Donald Trump and the Republicans.

I'm just going to insist on that.

If they want to ask for Democrats to vote for a Republican budget,

There are certain things that

Democrats are not going to be able to do, even if Republicans are saying, if you don't do this for us, it's all going to shut down.

And I think right now there are different answers from different voices

in the party,

in the House, voices like Pat Ryan and Jake Hockencloss have been part of a group

that has

laid out a pretty specific set of things.

The biggest,

well, I wouldn't say the biggest, but one, certainly big one, right, is that I don't see how you can tell Democrats the government will shut down unless you vote to strip away access to health care from Americans.

So I think that's likely to be a clear line.

But there are many others.

And look, if we're going to go into that, we have to know what it is we hope to do to have a less bad outcome than if Republicans just get to...

Is there a strategic benefit to just saying, go ahead, shut it down?

Not one to be taken lightly.

Why not?

It's theirs.

You know, they're holding the bag.

Yeah, but the reason you can't take it lightly is because how many people will get hurt.

And if their goal is already to wreck the federal government and they're well on their way,

a lot of there's just going to be a lot of damage left in the wake of this.

So I'm not saying that

I don't believe Democrats should roll over on this.

I think it's different than it was in the spring.

And I think that,

frankly, the unpopularity of the Republican proposals that they've jammed through is becoming clearer and clearer, too.

And again, just philosophically, I think the Republicans are in charge.

And if you're asking Democrats to actively cooperate with you,

you can't demand that we support.

You don't see a benefit.

I hate to use a Mel Robbins term, but let them.

Look, there's been this theory.

You know who Mel Robbins is, right?

She's real popular.

Anyway, look it up.

There's been this theory from day one that if what Democrats need to do is just let Republicans screw everything up, burn everything down, and then they'll screw it up and then they'll get blamed and then we'll come back into power.

Yes, that's the

I think that theory is wrong.

I don't disagree that they'll screw it up.

I am not so sure that they'll just get blamed.

One thing they're really good at, much better than actually running the government, is apportioning blame.

And that's even more so as they're dominating some of the ways people get their information.

So

again,

I think there really needs to be

a really forceful response this time.

I just don't want to assume that it's going to be easy or that it should be done lightly.

Is Chuck Schumer fit to do that?

He, I mean, one thing I've experienced is that he is exceptionally

aware of what the dynamics are to actually get anything done or to stop anything from actually getting done in the Senate.

And I would also say the virtues of a

caucus leader in the Senate or the House and the things you expect from them might be different than what you expect from a presidential candidate or a person playing a different role or a governor or a different person playing a different role in the party.

I do hope though that he recognizes how much has changed, how much the toolkit has changed, how much the relationship with the public has changed since some of the defining fights that might still be shaping his muscle memory.

Yes, I would suggest you not do social media anymore, actually.

Take a look, please.

You'll understand.

You've seen it.

I know what you mean.

It's a problem.

It really is.

You need to speak to him.

I'm sending you, not me.

Like, stop it, Chuck.

You're hurting my eyes.

Even if Democratic states also gerrymander their congressional districts, it's likely you can't match these Republican gains, who are much more willing to do so, let alone pick up more seats than the GOP.

It's not a realistic tit-for-tat, from what I understand.

How do you feel about gerrymandering, and what do you think Democrats should be putting their energy right now to make sure the party isn't permanently shut out of power?

Yeah, I mean, look, I do think there's a chance that some of these redistricting plans will be too clever by half because there's only so many Republicans to rearrange, and that might backfire on them.

But I wouldn't hang my hat on that as a strategy.

How do I feel about gerrymandering?

It's terrible.

I mean, in Indiana, for example.

Where you're headed next, correct?

Yes.

Yeah, as we speak, I'm getting ready to head to Indiana to, among other things, do a rally around

gerrymandering.

They are openly saying we want a 9-0 map.

Indiana, obviously, I grew up there.

I served there as mayor.

It is a conservative place.

But it is maybe a 60-40 kind of place right now.

So, in addition to just just the basic obvious unfairness of a place where if you get five people off the street at random, probably two out of those five will be Democrats, or let's say nine, maybe four of them would be Democrats, but the nine members you're going to send to Congress are going to be 100% Republican.

But it's more than that.

It's the contempt for the voter.

To just even go around saying it's going to be 9-0 means you are saying to the voter, we're going to decide who's going to win that election before you even bother to vote,

which is so insulting to every voter, Democrat, Republican, Independent, in the state of Indiana.

And I don't know how good our chances are of pushing back on that in a state house with a Republican supermajority, although you can tell from the body language that they're a little bit embarrassed that Trump is pressuring or requiring them to do this.

That doesn't seem to have stopped them.

No, because they're more afraid of him than they are of either their own conscience or their own constituents.

But at the very least, I think we can make sure that there is a political price to be paid for expressing that level of contempt toward your own voters.

So what do I think of gerrymandering?

I hate it.

Also, if they're doing it, which shouldn't be possible, but if they're doing it, we can't just sit here with our high-minded ideas and not respond.

So you support what Gavin Newsom's doing in California or anywhere else or any...

Yes.

I think if this is going to be

how things work, we can't just sit there and let them do it.

But that's not a long-term answer.

What we need is widespread, durable, actual reform.

We've got, what, 435 house districts, right?

Fewer than one in 10 are competitive.

In a country that's basically 50-50, that is nuts.

Obviously, we need a comprehensive structural solution to that.

And that shouldn't be partisan.

I mean, it is, but it shouldn't be.

We'll be back in a minute.

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Speaking of respect for voters and what people they choose, in July you were asked if you would endorse Zoran Mambame for mayor of New York City.

You said at the time he hadn't asked for your endorsement, which sounds rather quaint.

And you're not a player in New York City politics, but you would talk to him about it.

Now, it's now September, and Governor Cuomo just said he couldn't name a single living Democrat he admired, besides his other incredible attributes.

That was facetious.

Given the choice between these two candidates and Eric Adams, the hot mess that he is,

who would you rather see win?

And do you need an invitation to endorse him?

Governor Hochl just did, for example.

It's not a.

Because the voters picked him, young voters.

And one of the, I'll just make a little moment.

We tell young people to vote.

and then they vote and we tell them their vote sucks.

I'm sorry, that's their vote, and so we should respect it.

Yeah, so again, I'm not getting like, you know, formally involved in

a New York City mayor's race.

But between those choices you laid out, yeah, it's not close.

I mean, the ways in which Andrew Cuomo has disqualified himself,

in which the current mayor has disqualified himself, and don't get me started on the Republican candidate, like, it's not close.

He likes cats.

Okay, that's.

I'd put him at number two in my choice list, but okay.

Everybody's got something.

But yeah, I mean, I think that's very clear, right?

And by the way, I also think, even though I sit in a different place in the Democratic coalition than he does, I think that he has been absolutely right to be relentlessly focused on affordability.

And I think that we could learn a lot.

Like, some things obviously are not as useful.

Some things that worked in a democratic primary in new york city may not be particularly portable or useful here in michigan or sure but he's not running in michigan right but in terms of what we could learn in michigan or anywhere else from his campaign so why not just endorse first and foremost why not just say i like the i like the cut of his jib

say it just like that

i'm just i'm not planning to get formally involved in that race okay

but uh again, I think those things are really impressive.

I also think he has a real challenge, though.

And the challenge is,

in the same way that the most important job of the president is to bring the country together,

one thing I learned very quickly as mayor, and as a very policy-minded mayor, who came in not terribly interested in anything but the specific policies I wanted to implement.

The job of a mayor is to bring everybody together.

Doesn't mean everybody's going to support you politically, but you need to, you are a walking symbol of what people in your city have in common

and what he will need in order to succeed as mayor.

And what I think he, from what I can see,

has recognized in terms of the campaign too, is the importance of moving on from some of the things that were more divisive in past statements or past positions.

And that's not about necessarily even changing a policy, but making sure that he positions himself to bring people together, including people who might not support him politically.

What do you think is biggest asset and his biggest negative from your perspective, just from yours?

I mean, I think the, in terms of assets, the

again, the focus on affordability.

Now, that sets a high bar because some of those things are really intractable in New York City, but you win, you get to work those issues.

I would add to that his kind of go-everywhere strategy on social media.

I believe and practice the same strategy, not just on social media, but just being out and about.

I think in terms of campaign tactics, I think that's smart.

I think it's the right thing to do.

And also, again, in recent weeks, it seems to me that he has recognized, probably thinking not just as a candidate, but as a future mayor,

he's recognized the importance of finding ways to bring people together to meet Bloomberg.

Biggest problem for the Democratic Party?

I think it's, look,

specifically, obviously, various positions or statements he's taken that would be pretty toxic here in Michigan or a lot of other places.

But I don't know.

I don't know what to say for the Democratic Party.

Like every Democrat, wherever they are, needs to decide what they're going to do and say that makes sense where they're from.

And for us to be one party, all of that has to coer into a bigger set of things that we care about so that we can be in coalition with each other.

And I think that's okay.

I don't expect to ever be on the exact same page as the most conservative Democrat or for that matter, Bernie, but there's a reason why we are in coalition together.

Yeah.

So let's wrap up by talking about how you approach both these elections coming up, the midterm elections, the 2028 presidential election.

You decided not to run for Michigan's open Senate seat next year's midterms.

You might have been a shoe-in.

Does that mean you're going to run for president again in 2020?

There's no such thing as a shoe-in.

Well, you probably would have won.

Thank you.

Okay.

Sorry, what was.

What was the

are you going to run for president again in 2028?

Please don't be coy.

Come on.

I don't know.

Really?

It's 2025.

That's not very long.

Have you lived through the last nine months?

Yeah.

That's true.

I got to tell you,

that was better than the Gavin answer.

That said, he said I could sleep in the Lincoln bedroom, so we know where he is on that.

It's my greatest goal.

Will you let me sleep in the Lincoln bedroom?

Sure.

Okay, there we go.

He's running for president, ladies and gentlemen.

Apparently, Trump's changed it, by the way.

Oh, it's a Trump bedroom now?

Yeah.

Great.

There's a lot of gold happening.

It's going to take a lot to fix that.

So, but if not, or if not, name three Democrats who you think should run for president, if not you, and then tell us their strengths and weaknesses.

You're just going to put that in front of of me.

Yes, I am.

You put it in front of me, but I just don't think I should eat it.

Come on.

Look, there are great

people in our party.

Okay.

Some of them are thinking about running for president.

Some of the most interesting ones are ones who are not maybe immediately being mentioned as 2028 contenders, but are just really interesting people providing a lot of leadership.

I mean, I'm mostly interested in people in my generation who are, I mean, you got folks in the Senate like Andy Kim, who came out of a very trumpy district in New Jersey and is now a very modern U.S.

senator.

My senator right here, our senator right here in Michigan, Alyssa Slacken.

In the House, right?

I think in the House, again, I was very impressed that Pat Ryan from New York was pretty much the first to the punch to say, if

we're going to be forced into a shutdown by the Republicans, here's what we would need before we would be ready to give Democratic votes.

And he named specific things that also very wisely, I think, tied together the things that we're all going to feel in everyday life, like healthcare costs, to the militarization of our cities and how all of that is part of one big picture.

So people like him, some are, you know, coded more center or more left.

People like Marie Gluzen Camperes is a very original thinker

who, because she has a body shop, I mean, that was her career, just has a regard for people who work with their hands in the trades that has

always historically been so core to who we are as Democrats, but weirdly is not how we're thought of since this education gap has opened up.

And she's very true to her district in a way that

I really respect having worked with her on getting this big bridge fixed that affects her district.

Others are really not talked about very much.

And maybe because they're not craving national spotlight, but leaders like Gabe Vasquez in southern New Mexico, who I think is just a remarkable leader.

So my point is, we have Jake Hockencloss, who has provided, I think, some of the most interesting and intellectually ambitious ideas.

Those are all great Sarah McBride.

Great.

Sarah McBride, another person who's been so.

So no one that could run against you for president.

Correct?

Love them all.

Love them all.

How do you like Gavin?

You're just behind him in the numbers.

Great infrastructure work in California that we did together.

Okay, all right, okay.

Do you like all his social media stuff?

We all have our style.

Oh.

I'm very glad that someone is doing what he's doing.

It's just not, you know,

it's not my style, but I'm glad he's doing it.

Okay.

You made history as both the first openly gay person to win the Senate confirmation, took cabinet position, and first openly gay presidential candidate when you ran.

But on a recent episode of his podcast, conservative commentator Tucker Carlson called you a fake gay guy.

He said he wants to ask you some, quote, really specific questions about gay sex.

I would like to know your response.

But I'm having moments here now, too.

So

I made two references you don't get.

Both.

First of all, I do not think I want to discuss anything with Tucker Carlson.

Okay.

Same, same, same.

Also,

but I cannot think of a topic I would like to discuss less with Tucker Carlson than that.

Even though I will admit some level of morbid curiosity on what in the hell he thinks his...

No, actually, no.

I suppose it's a sign of progress that

their idea of a conspiracy is that I'm actually secretly straight.

And,

but yeah,

just where do you even, I don't know.

are in a post-political

it's worked with people who attack me and I'm like stop flirting with me

They go away really quick So I have a last let's end on a positive note in your interview with Padze America last month You said President Trump's dismailing the government also presents Democrats with an opportunity to rebuild on better terms build back better

So

you also say arsonists present homeowners an opportunity to rebuild, which is not the best way to rebuild.

You did not say that?

Did you sort of say that?

No.

Okay, all right.

You could also, oh, I say, I am saying that.

Sorry, I'm reading it wrong.

But, okay.

Phoenix, Phoenix.

You got this.

You got the

paint a picture of what

America looks like.

I think whether we're talking about people in political practice,

elected leaders,

people like me, but also people like the policy scholars here at the Ford School at the University of Michigan and a whole lot of other people

have an opportunity to invent some things from first principles.

And I use the word opportunity very advisedly because it is a bad thing that we are here.

But

it means that a whole set of fundamental questions that were just being assumed is asked and answered because we had this big rickety status quo, we actually get to start over or have to start over.

We're forced to start over.

It was so wrong, like criminally wrong, to dismantle USAID.

One of the ugliest things I've seen in this parade of horribles is not one of the most famous things that happened in Washington, but it was the Secretary of State lying to Congress by saying that nobody lost their lives in that when we know from good journalism the names of some of the people who lost their lives from that.

Having said all of that, talk to anybody who's been involved in international development aid, including at USAID,

and they would not say that the status quo that we had in 2023 was exactly where we needed to be.

So if we're going to have to start over,

it's not okay that we do, but if we do, or the Department of Education that they are burning to the ground.

Or who knows, we might have to think about tax policy on a clean sheet because they're going to plunge us into a debt crisis with all these giveaways to billionaires.

So many things where we might find ourselves starting from scratch

is there is an opportunity that rests in that.

And it's to build a different way of doing things socially, economically, politically, that actually supports your ability to live a life of your choosing and to have a good life.

Look, the government never never gets decides that you're going to have a good life, but we can make it easier or harder in so many ways.

And we shouldn't be wedded to all these institutions, many of them built in the 40s or 50s that we kept because it was what we had

going the way they were going.

But frankly, we're really showing by the 2020s that they were not well adapted for.

So, where would you start?

Name one thing:

getting rid of the Electoral College, expanding the Supreme Court, ending gerrymandering.

We should totally do all three of those, yeah.

Okay, what else?

What's the one thing, the first thing you do,

day one?

I mean, those three sound great.

Maybe we can do those three in one day.

Not really, because you need a constitutional amendment.

By the way, another thing we need to do is revisit the most important, Jill Lapore has a new book about this.

The most important attribute of the Constitutional Amendment

is that it can be amended.

And we just stopped.

Like for the last 50 years, we haven't had a substantive amendment.

We used to do that, not all the time, but we used to do it often.

For whatever reason, maybe because we were there first.

Among presidential democracies, ours is one of the hardest to update.

And I think that is costing us.

Thomas Jefferson himself was the one who said we might as well require a man to wear the jacket that fitted him when he was a boy as to require future generations to live under the regiment.

Next amendment.

I mean, look, we'll get to the Electoral College.

I don't know if that's my day one thing.

I mean, really, if we've had to pick one to start with,

how about something that corrects the harm of Citizens United and the idea that money should just freely flow into our policy?

There you go.

Perfect way to end.

Secretary Budajedge, thank you so much for your time.

Today's show was produced by Christian Castor-Rousselle, Kateri Yoakum, Michelle Aloy, Megan Burney, and Kaylin Lynch.

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