Sen. Smith on the Shutdown, Democrats’ Future, and Retiring Early

We coordinated our outfits, obviously.

We've never met one another before, but we're like, oh, yeah, we have the same fashion.

I always dress like this since eighth grade.

I think she's dressed like this since she's not running again, and she's like, fuck it.

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 Senator Tina Smith of Minnesota.

Earlier this year, Smith announced her decision to retire from the Senate so she won't run for re-election next year even though she's only in her mid-60s.

If you can believe it, that's relatively young by Senate standards, but of course it's not young.

Her retirement puts more stress on Senate Democrats as they head into an already tough midterm election cycle.

The party will need to flip four seats currently held by Republicans while also defending the 13 they currently hold if they want to win back the majority.

But Democrats are facing more immediate problems.

We taped our conversation with Senator Smith on Saturday evening, just a few days before the government is expected to run out of money.

If Congress doesn't pass a spending measure by Tuesday night, the government will shut down.

And with Republicans in control of every branch of the government right now, the Democrats' lack of political power means they don't have much leverage.

I want to talk to Senator Smith because she's leaving, and perhaps she can actually say what's happening in Congress, which has lost an enormous amount of power in the Trump administration,

and what the Democrats can do to try to equalize that power.

All right, let's get into my conversation with Senator Smith.

Our expert question comes from Amanda Littman, co-founder and president of Run for Something.

The interview was recorded in front of a live audience at the annual Min Post Festival in downtown Minneapolis.

Thank you to MinPost for hosting the conversation.

Stick around.

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So I'm excited to talk to you because you are leaving, and so I hope you'll be more forthright.

People tend to be more forthright.

Suddenly, for example, Tom Tillis suddenly found,

well, you know what he found.

So anyway, thanks for coming on.

We're going to talk about political violence, President Trump, your retirement announcement, and the state of the Democratic Party.

So there's lots to talk about.

So let's dive in.

Let's start with some news.

The indictment of former FBI director James Comey came after constant pressure on the Department of Justice by President Trump.

Were you surprised?

Were you

when the news came, he had been talking about it and

the truth about it?

Anybody who is surprised that Donald Trump is going to do what he said he was going to do has not been paying attention.

And so I think it's hard to say surprised, but I was certainly like, you know, oh shit, like another time.

Here's another thing, another thing that he's doing.

And,

you know, it's been since the 1970s, after the debacle with Watergate and with Richard Nixon, that there has been a norm in this country that we don't allow, we don't, presidents don't use the Department of Justice to prosecute their personal grievances and to go after their political enemies.

That's what Richard Nixon did.

And yet we have this president.

Here is yet another norm that he is overturning.

And we'll see what happens.

I mean, I believe that James Comey will not be, you know, he'll be exonerated.

But think of what this is doing to his life, to his daughter's life, to his

son-in-law's.

Both of them work for the Department of Justice.

Both of them work for the Department of Justice.

And

they used to work for the Department of Justice.

It is fundamentally undermining the rule of law and the idea that the Department of Justice is there without fear of favor to prosecute the law.

Again, he's putting himself above the law.

What is the problem?

Is it Pam Bondi?

Is it that he's put in place someone who's willing to do his bidding?

I think he has put in place at justice, at defense, at interior, at health and human services, I mean, in every, at the Department of Agriculture, really big thing in Minnesota.

He has put in place people whose loyalty is solely to him and not to the work of those agencies or to the American people.

And so they all just do his bidding, and they're going to continue to do his bidding until somebody stops them.

So, when it comes to going after his enemies, there's no reason to think he will stop at Comey.

On Friday, he even said, frankly, I hope there are others.

You said on Blue Sky that Trump had successfully turned the DOJ into his political weapon.

What does it mean for the country if he keeps going?

Well,

you know, I think what we are seeing, we are in the middle of, I believe, the middle of an

authoritarian takeover of our country.

It's not like it might happen or it's starting to happen.

We are in the middle of it.

And so I think that there is this sort of inexorable process that if we don't stop it,

it's not going to stop.

He's not going to stop.

People sometimes have this idea, oh, you know, we're going to be able to make it through this bad patch, and then he'll have had enough.

But understand how he has surrounded himself this second term.

He's much, much more dangerous this second term, because the people that he surrounded himself with actually know what they're doing.

You know, Russ Vogue knows what he's doing, he knows how to dismantle the prerogatives of Congress and concentrate power in the executive branch.

And so

that's the situation that we're in.

And what do we do about it?

I mean, I think

the whole mode of this administration is to try to tell everybody in this room, people in other rooms like this, that we actually don't have any power to shape the outcome, to wear us down, to exhaust us, and to basically cause us to just sort of give up.

But of course, that's not true.

We do have the power.

We just have to agree to use it and to not give up.

And that's the job ahead of us for these next semesters.

Let's talk about the exhaustion element.

Yeah.

Because this week it was, let's see, Tylenol, which you should take if if you're pregnant.

Having been pregnant, you should take it.

And I'm not a doctor, but I'm going to give you that piece of advice.

My doctor, Donald Trump, RFK.

I'm going to trust my doctor.

So

you had that, that went on for a while.

There was the Jimmy Kimmel situation.

There was the escalator.

There was the escalator and the teleprompter.

There was

tariffs, new tariffs.

New tariffs on pharmaceuticals and everything else.

So it does seem inexhaustible.

Talk a little bit about that as a public official when there's so many things coming at you, and this is, of course, a longtime theory of Steve Bannon.

I kept trying to get people to pay attention to him because he was really quite smart in that area.

This flood the zone approach, and a lot of people do feel like it's a distraction from the Epstein files, of course, which are now again this week

is still not been released, but possibly could be,

unless there's a government shutdown.

We'll get to that.

So talk about the inexhaustibility of this effort.

Although I just have to acknowledge that today in the face of the Epstein files, the president announced to the country that he's planning on releasing the Earhart files.

Okay.

The files.

These are the files that would maybe shed some light into why it was that Amelia Earhart's plane crashed all those years ago.

Undoubtedly, this was also caused by Antifa.

Right, right, right.

So, but again, it's like, you know, I don't want to go get to that.

That one I'm kind of interested in, I'll be honest with you.

All right.

I'm not uninterested.

But go ahead.

I'm aware when I'm being distracted, yet I am also interested at the same time.

Not to go all literary on you, but one of my favorite poets, Edna, great feminist Edna St.

Vincent Millay, said, it's not one thing after the other.

It's the same damn thing over and over again.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And that's what we're seeing here.

It's the same damn thing over and over again.

And

I mean, I say this to myself every morning when I sometimes scrape myself out of bed and try to figure out how to go on.

And I say this to people, whether it is the,

you know, whether it is the parents at Annunciation School or whether it is the tribal leaders I was just meeting with yesterday up at Red Lake Nation.

I mean, we don't pick the time when we are called on to lead.

And we're all leaders here, not just me.

All of us are leaders.

And in these moments, we have to do whatever we can.

We have to rise to the occasion.

And that is actually the story of this country.

It is individuals appreciating that they have the power to make this country what they want it to be and then using that power and not being exhausted.

And I am not saying it is easy.

It is really damn hard.

But that's it.

That's what it is.

So Trump is now accusing another former FBI director, Christopher Wray, who he put in place, I believe, of lying about hundreds of undercover agents being present at the January 6th insurrection.

There's no evidence to support this claim.

And in fact, almost a year ago, the Inspector General said hundreds of officers were at the Capitol as part of a response after the attack.

He's hinting that he wants to name those ghost agents.

He may go after Ray, too.

How do you forestall this?

You said you've got to get up every day, but what options do you actually have until the election in 2026?

Are there any options?

Well,

and we were talking about this a little bit earlier.

The options that we have, they're basically

what are the levers of power that we have.

I mean, one, we have the levers of power of the people that we've been talking about, the rapid decline in the popularity of the president, which is a very good thing because that does diminish his power.

So that's one thing.

The second thing is the power of the judiciary to stop him from doing things that are clearly lawless.

And we could talk about that, right?

Because we've had some good successes, especially in the lower courts, stopping

but not in the upper court.

We continually see, it just happened again yesterday, the Supreme Court issuing these shadow docket opinions where they don't say why, they just say what.

And

they have been increasingly saying, yes, the president, until we decide finally, the president can continue on.

And then, so that's like

not working out.

as we need it to, especially once these cases get to the Supreme Court.

And then you have the power of of Congress.

And Congress has important powers.

It has oversight powers.

It has the ability to not only shine a light on the bad stuff that's happening, but to actually

use our oversight powers to stop it.

But of course, the problem is right now that the Republicans are not doing that.

They're either saying, oh, we have to, this is going to pass.

This is a bad patch.

Yeah, this is pretty bad, but we're going to

hope it gets better, which of course it's not going to happen.

Or some of them are saying, no, really, we're working on a plan.

We just have to wait for that one thing.

And well, what, if this is one thing that you're doing, this is what they say to you with a straight face.

Yes, this is what they say.

And what do you say?

It's sort of like

when

your kid has done this, I mean, I don't even want to compare them to children because children are

have a higher moral standard, I think.

But when somebody comes and tells you over and over and over again, no, trust me,

trust me, I've got this.

I'm going to get this figured out.

I'm going to do the right thing ultimately.

And they tell you that over and over again, and they never do the right thing.

You don't trust them anymore.

And that's the position that we're in right now in Congress, which is why I think that Americans, and I feel strongly about this, are looking for Democrats to fight on this and to stand up and say no.

Right.

Well, we'll get to that in a second.

But two other things that just happened, he signed a memorandum directing the administration to crack down on funders funders of so-called left-wing terrorism.

He named George Soros, Reid Hoffman, someone I know very well, a Democratic donor.

He's also said California Democratic Senator Adam Schiff and New York Attorney General Letitia James are guilty as hell.

If he's able to punish these enemies, even on these spurious charges, what tools do you have?

You can ignore the Republican senators.

They're not going to help you.

Obviously, the Republican Congress is not going to help you.

What do you do?

Because he also was announced,

he announced Saturday he's deploying troops to what he calls war ravaged Portland.

There was just a lovely picture of a farmer's market there today.

So I'm not sure if war ravaged is the right word I would use.

Probably overpriced tomatoes, perhaps.

To protect ICE facilities, his authorities using full force as necessary.

These actions don't have a precedent.

It really doesn't in this country.

It has a precedent in other countries.

So what do you think the end goal is?

And what are the critical tools when you say fight back?

What does that mean

if he continues to do this with impunity?

Well,

I think there is power in us calling out what we see and not going along with it.

And that is, I mean, as I, you know, Democrats, my party, our party might not be in power, but we are not powerless.

And that means that we have to

exercise the authorities that we have.

But there, you know, there is no, there is no like, oh, yes, this is my secret tool that I'm keeping in my trunk until things get really bad, because I think we're already there.

It is the question of,

you know, marshaling our kind of our collective authority as the people of this country to say we're not going to put up with this.

But at the end of the day, is it protests?

What is the

problem?

I think it is.

I mean, I think, yes,

I think it is protest.

I think it is visible action.

I think it is anything that anybody in this room can do.

Everybody can do what they can do.

And

I got involved in politics at the very beginning as an organizer, literally, like going door to door and knocking on the doors in my neighborhood and talking to people about what mattered to them and then understanding that that is the source of power in this country and that our job is to tap into that and to connect it and to build a powerful coalition.

And that is what the job is ahead of us.

And of course, as long as we have free and fair elections, and I am optimistic, I mean, I'm not like, you know,

terribly, I'm realistic, but I believe that we're going to be able to save this country.

But that is why these elections are so important coming up in what is it now 14 months, at least for the House.

And it is why what

Democrats do over the next 14 months is so important because we can't just be against them.

We have to have some directions.

So let's turn to the looming government shutdown.

You said you won't vote for a spending bill unless it's bipartisan, and during the shutdown debate in March, which divided Senate Democrats, you voted against the funding bill.

Minority Leader Chuck Schumer initially signaled Senate Democrats would block the Republican funding bill, but changed course.

Would Democrats be in a better position now if Schumer had held the line?

You can tell us now.

Well, so I, of course, voted no in March, and I'm going to vote no again because I do not think that

I don't I think that you know these people are bullies and they will bully you until you say you're not going to be bullied anymore, until you say no, until you're not, I'm not going to be intimidated.

I'm going to fight on this.

So yes, of course.

Of course I believe that if

more Senate Democrats had voted the way I voted, that we would be in a better position.

And I think

people are people and as you're walking around amongst those 100 people that are in the United States Senate, the question is how many of those people on the Republican side believe that the Democrats are going to get rolled again?

You know, that we're going to, at the end of the day, like, go along.

And

if more of them think that, then they are less likely to actually get serious about negotiating with us.

Where are they?

Do they think Democrats are going to roll over again?

I think we showed them right before we left last week that we actually got more votes for our proposal than the Republicans got for theirs.

And that was because, like, eight of them couldn't even bother to show up.

So, that's pretty bad.

So, I think they are starting to understand that

we're not going to give them.

So, if the government does shut down now, what comes next for Democrats?

What's the strategy?

The administration is going to use it to push mass layoffs.

Russell Vogt has already said this, and the Federal Government, as they're reportedly planning to do it, although other news shows they're trying to rehire people from the Doge cuts.

So, what is the worst case scenario?

Because I think one of the things the Democrats often do is is say, well, if we don't vote for it, all hell is going to break loose, but all hell is going to break loose.

Why not just let it?

I mean, not to be all Mel Robbins on you, but let them.

Let them.

All hell did break loose.

Yes, it did.

It did break loose.

And so I think, you know, he made this effort last week to say, you know, of course, first thing he said was, don't even bother talking to those people.

You know, that being us.

You know, I represent 5.5 million Minnesotans, so if you're refusing to talk to me, that means you're refusing to talk to everybody in this room.

And then, what he did is he started, they started to issue these threats that you're referring to.

Oh, we're going to fire a bunch of people.

Well, for God's sake, they're already firing a bunch of people.

They're not going to be better behaved.

They're not going to follow the law

if I go ahead and vote for their thing with no guarantees.

In fact, all I'm really doing is giving them a blank check.

Right.

That's what it's saying.

I'm giving them a blank check and saying, go ahead.

And not only that, but I'm saying, oh, and this is kind of okay with me because I voted for it so listen this is not a situation where there is one action that has no risk and another action that has all the risk right there we are in a bad place and there are so what is Schumer telling you how confident are you in his ability to lead you through talks on a possible shutdown I think that

The you know, Chuck and Speaker Jeffries have made it very, very clear that we are ready to sit down and talk with them any time to figure out how we could come up with some sort of a compromise.

At the very least, they should say to us that if we pass a damn budget, that they're going to make sure that the president follows that budget or we are really truly just talking to ourselves.

And so I have great confidence that there's, unlike in March, that in September and October now, that we have, first of all, much better coordination between the Democrats in the House and the Senate.

That's super important.

And of course, we're willing to negotiate, but I'll work with anybody who wants to work with me to help lower costs for Minnesotans and try to avoid these terrible health insurance premium increases.

But you got to talk to me.

Right.

But I think the point is not to talk to you.

I think that's the goal, is not to.

So in shutting down, what is the worst case scenario you have, given it's a worst case scenario?

Because he may not even follow any deal you make.

That's right.

I mean, he might not follow a deal.

If we say we gave him the votes, he might not follow that deal.

Right.

And And if we don't just give him our votes without any understanding about what's going to happen, then we will go into a shutdown.

And then what happens next?

Then what I think will happen next is that the pressure will build.

Right now, he just is sort of blithely going about and doing whatever he feels like doing.

And I don't think that he's feeling any pressure.

And I think that he will start to feel that.

And I think the Republicans will start to feel that.

And we all will because shutdowns are bad.

Right.

And I recently interviewed former Secretary Pete Buttigieg.

Well, he agreed the shutdown debate is different than the one in March.

He also said, quote, one thing Republicans are really good at is apportioning blame.

A recent Gallup poll found the Democratic Party has never been more unpopular than it is now.

It has 34 percent favorability rating.

If the government does shut down, how do you avoid taking blame and hurting the reputation of the party?

Well, so the polls right now also show that if there is a shutdown, Americans understand that Republicans are in charge of the Presidency, the Senate, and the House.

They are in charge.

And if they can't figure out how to get their act together, then they're going to be the ones who get the blame.

Now,

you know,

I've been involved in this line of work for a while, and I know that things also, things can change and things morph.

And, you know, what the president does in this situation, nobody can predict.

Hell, we can't predict what he's going to do when we're not in shutdown.

So I think then it's going to become an intense competition about what we need to do to fight off this

president, who is, let's remember, deeply unpopular.

People's costs are going up and up and up on a variety of things, and it's going to get worse in October.

It's not going to get better.

And is he just going to sit there and go play golf?

I mean, I think the pressure will build on him.

You think that's the problem?

I do.

I really do.

And then what?

Then, ultimately, how all shutdowns end, if that's where we end up.

If they don't negotiate with us beforehand, they'll negotiate with us after.

That's how you end things.

It's got to be bipartisan, even in this incredibly

fraught moment.

The only way to avoid it is negotiation.

The only way to get out of it is negotiation.

Do you at this moment believe shutdown is inevitable and something you would say, bring it on?

I mean, I don't want it, but I'm not going to give my vote to do something that I think is bad for my constituents.

And that, I think, is the situation that we're in because of their refusal to do it.

And there's nothing right now that you see.

I mean, sure.

You know, Jon Thun could call up, you know, the majority leader in the Senate could up Chuck, you know, tomorrow or this evening and say, let's see if we can't avoid this.

We both really believe he might say that we should not allow these tax breaks for insurance premiums for people who buy their insurance on the exchange.

We shouldn't allow those to expire.

So let's come up with an agreement on that.

We'll be back in a minute.

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So in June,

we're going to move to political violence, a moment we're in right now.

It's a little more serious than just a government shutdown.

A gunman killed your friend, State Representative Melissa Hortman, and her husband Mark.

The gunman reportedly included you on the hit list.

You said at the time you felt like the country was at a real tipping point.

And after conservative commentator Charlie Kirk's assassination this month, talk how you feel right.

How did you feel being on that list?

Are you fearful?

Are you do you feel like we can pull things back?

I mean I know you have an optimistic Minnesota feel to you.

I feel it right now.

But

how do you feel right now about the violence?

Well, you know, I

say, and I mean it, that I wake up every single day feeling pretty confident that everything is going to be fine, that I'm going to be safe, that my family is going to be safe.

That sort of, it's like this innate thing.

But

let's, you know, I mean, this, it shook me.

It shook my family.

I will never forget, you know, waking up at 7:30 in the morning, the morning that Melissa was shot, you know, on the in her own home, and realizing that I had all these messages on my cell phone

because my staff learned, the governor's office learned that my name was on the list and they couldn't reach me because I turned my phone off off at night.

And so,

you know,

there was, we, you know, immediately got this, you know, security.

There was a,

you know, a suburban parked outside

in my front driveway for over 24 hours with a young

young private security officer.

And I will never forget one of our sons.

We were trying to have our grandchildren not be afraid of the scary black car in the front driveway.

And

so we rolled down the window and Harlan looked in and waved at the guy sitting there and our son Sam walked away and just like burst into tears because it's so real.

And so it's been a very weird thing to be in a position of trying to translate this, the trauma for our state, the bigger issues of political violence in this country, sort of through all of these different prisms.

And one thing that I've been feeling a lot is that, you know, a lot of people will say, oh, this isn't who we are.

This isn't who we are.

And I do believe that almost everyone in this country abhors political violence.

But

violent behavior is not, it is, is not an aberration in our country.

No.

It is part of who we are.

That's correct.

Slavery, the Tulsa race riots.

the massacre at Wounded Knee.

I think we have to see that and understand it.

And then we have to always, we just have to come back to the universal condemnation of using violence to resolve our political differences.

And that's why what the president and the vice president and Steve Miller and these folks are doing, that's why it is so dangerous.

Do you,

obviously, Democrats and Republicans are pointing fingers at each other for the rise of political violence, each armed with their own statistics.

I think most of the statistics are very clear.

but you've said you think Trump is fueling it, and there's plenty of reasons to believe that.

How do you then drop the temperature if Trump keeps fanning the flames?

And J.D.

Vance does do the same thing, although more clottishly and more spectacularly uncharming.

He's so uncharming.

He's like, everyone's always like, oh, he's getting president.

I'm like,

well, that's like a whole other show.

That's another show.

That's a whole other show.

And I would love to do that show.

I served with

tariffs on upholstered furniture.

But go ahead.

Yeah, I know.

I know.

I don't think.

I'm not going to go into it.

You don't need to.

You know,

I was thinking about, as I've thought a lot about this this last several months, and I was thinking about the horror of 9-11 and

what President Bush did.

And I disagreed with him on many, many, many things.

But in that moment, what did he do?

He stepped forward and he said,

we must not use this moment

to stoke Islamophobia.

Muslim folks are our friends.

They are our neighbors.

That was the right thing to do.

It was the leadership thing to do.

It's completely the antithesis of what the president is doing.

I mean, what I'm doing in my own life is I am trying to confront in a real and human way when I see that unfolding in real time.

I mean,

this is why I chose to talk to Mike Lee in the way that I chose to talk to him.

After Hortman's murder, you confronted

Utah Republican Senator Mike Lee about some posts on X where he fanned the conspiracy theories about the attacks.

He's since taken them down.

Talk about that.

What did he say to you when you confronted him?

And has he said anything more since Kirk's death?

So

I wanted very much when I saw what he was putting up there, it was so cruel, it was so heartless, and it was so performative, right?

He was performing for his online audience.

And what I wanted to do was to communicate to him that this is real.

These are real people, people that I cared a lot about.

I'm his colleague.

And so that is why I went to talk with him personally rather than fire off myself some, you know, snarky thing about how awful he was.

And honestly, I think he was

like like kind of stunned.

Because this is what happens.

People who do these shitty things are not used to being confronted in person by another human being.

And that was to me just about saying, like, there's, where is your humanity here?

He did ultimately take it down, but he never really, he didn't, like, take responsibility for it.

He just sort of took it down.

What did he say to you when you confronted him?

He,

have you ever been around a guy who isn't used to being confronted?

Many times.

I'm sure this has never happened.

You know some of these, I mean like it might be a senator, it might be a tech billionaire.

I mean it every day of the week and twice on Sunday.

So when you see

my three-year-old.

He you can see it was kind of serendipitous in a way that there was a picture taken so I'm standing there and he's you know he's got his sort of hands on his hips and he's leaning forward a little bit like he's trying to physically intimidate me.

But that guy, I know.

And people later said, Did you feel intimidated?

And I said, no, I actually felt like I was quite a bit taller than he was.

Yes, yeah.

That's what I was noticing.

He sort of stuttered a little bit and he said something along the lines of, I certainly didn't mean to do any harm,

which is very different from saying, I did wrong, I'm sorry.

And

that was kind of it.

That was was it.

That was kind of it.

So he just, I didn't mean to do harm.

I didn't mean to, you know, I certainly didn't mean to hurt you, or I didn't mean to upset you.

And that's kind of another classic thing.

Don't be upset.

Right, right, yeah, right.

I didn't mean to do it.

Not, but I didn't mean to do it.

No, I didn't, like, no, it's more like, I'm sorry that you're mad at me,

is more the thing, right?

Yeah, right.

That's

like, that's don't be, yeah.

It's like, it's when someone says, I don't mean to call you a bitch, but and then that's what you do.

Right.

Oh, no, it's even, it's more like, if calling if me calling you a bitch upsets you,

I'm sorry that I upset you.

Yeah,

yeah, you're right, that's better.

Have you encountered him since?

Have you

he's had an unusual journey?

He used to be relatively reasonable.

Now he's extremely online.

Yes, he is extremely online and he's seized by online.

Yeah, yeah.

And of course,

the

you know, in the context of this bigger conversation we're having about political violence and how important it is that political violence is condemned immediately,

regardless of whether the person who was injured or killed is somebody that you support or somebody that you don't support.

The condemnation has to be universal.

And of course, you know, he immediately condemned the murder of Charlie Kirk, as well as he should, and as did I.

Yes, most Democratic.

Most Democratic Democratic people.

We all did, right?

Yeah, we all did.

But what they're doing now, of course, is trying to manipulate the facts of this case to use their power to further erode people's rights.

And, of course, famously, the President of the United States was, when he was asked, why did you not lower the flags to have mass for Speaker Hortman, Melissa Hortman, when you did for Charlie Kirk, the President went, who?

Right.

Who was that?

Right.

Which is, of course, such a sign of disrespect.

Yes, he does that on cruelty.

Were you surprised they tried to do that with Jimmy Kimmel, which sort of ignited a lot lot of people?

And were you surprised that Disney was such a suck-up?

Yeah.

I think that's the word I was looking for.

Quiz.

Again, right?

This is the lesson of this age, is that if you try to appease a bully, it will never end.

It only ends when you stand up to them.

And Disney, you know, took them a...

few days, right, to realize that they were on a bad path because they started to get all this external pressure.

And

I wasn't surprised about Jimmy Kimmel.

And I'm sure in their world, they were thinking, oh, this guy, nobody watches this show.

He's not that popular.

This is going to be a great example.

And of course, let's remember, this is the corruption here, because this is really about corruption.

It's about the corruption of Brendan Carr putting pressure when he can on these television stations because they need the approval of the FC

deal for that in order to get a multi-billion dollar deal done.

And so that's the corruption here.

Right.

And he certainly got his on South Park this week.

I'd encourage you all to watch it.

I felt for maybe a millisecond sorry for Brandon Carr, and then I thought, no.

Deserves.

It's really funny.

No.

Are you surprised by the acquiescence of, you know, to the tech billionaires, but law firms, university presidents, everybody else?

I talked to a lot of university presidents when all of this was happening, as the Trump administration was going after universities.

And

there were some that understood that this was an essential moment, that they were part of the civil society of this country.

And if they were to kind of kowtow to the president in this moment, that it was never going to end.

And then there were others who

sort of felt like they had to work it out.

And I think that that's exactly what happened with the law firms as well.

and again this is the this is the corruption of this issue it's not I mean it is certainly about free speech rights it is certainly about standing up for your your your your your freedom but it is understanding that the the corruption here is intense because you've got these law firms that are trying to figure out how to make lots and lots and lots of money and I'm not opposed to that I mean you know that's the that's the capitalist system

but as soon as you start to have to appease the government in order to be able to do your business I mean,

that's what Hungary looks like.

Right, right.

That well-known center of innovation,

capitalism, Hungary.

It is not.

I'm meaning to say it is not.

They've not invented anything.

No, the goulash is excellent, but otherwise, from an innovation point of view,

they don't matter.

What does that do when you think of all the various industries that have done that?

Which to you is the worst?

Tech, presumably, correct?

Yes.

To me.

Well, I don't know.

I mean,

there's an overlap between tech and crypto.

And I think that

the corruption around

the crypto money flowing in to fund campaigns at the same time that the Trump family is making billions of dollars on crypto at the same time that Republican members of Congress, primarily, primarily, not exclusively, are trying to pass laws to create a so-called bespoke regulatory system that allows for the crypto sector to escape from the basic consumer protections that make sure that people don't get ripped off.

That, to me, is the worst example that we are seeing right now.

Right now.

And with the tech companies bigger and more powerful than ever, are you surprised they haven't pushed back?

Are you?

No.

I warned you all.

I warned you here a couple of years ago.

You know, when you saw,

I will never forget being on the, you know, being in the Capitol Dome on Inauguration Day, and I felt that I needed to be there to bear witness to this and to see there on the stage former presidents and members of the new cabinet.

But they're front and center, in some cases, not always, but in some cases, sitting in front of the new cabinet were some of the most wealthy, some of the wealthiest tech billionaires in the world.

That tells you a lot.

Yeah, I was not surprised in any way.

Well, I ran into one of them and said,

a phrase I use a lot, which was, you're so poor, all you have is money,

which they don't like.

Did they go what do you mean?

No, I run into them.

I live in DC and I run into a bunch of them.

And one of them also came came up to me and said, looks like we won.

And I go, but you're still an asshole.

And then he looked at me and I was like, have a good day.

Yeah, okay.

Anyway, speaking of Washington, you're retiring.

Your Senate seat is one of at least four Democrats had to defend in the next midterms.

Gary Peters in Michigan is also retiring, so is Dick Durbin in Illinois and Gene Shaheen in New Hampshire.

Talk about why you decided to retire now given the long odds of retaking control of the Senate.

Well, so there's two pieces to this.

The first piece is I'm 67 and when you're 67 you think differently about the next 10 years of your life.

You're not thinking, oh, this is the next 10 years of the next 40 years.

You think this is the next 10 years of, you know, God willing, I stay healthy.

And how do I want to spend that time?

Who do I want to spend it with?

And so that for me was the personal part of the decision.

And

also,

no, I will have been in the Senate for nine years, which seems to me like a pretty long time.

I think it's the longest gig I've ever had.

And

it seemed like enough for me.

And, but then this is the second part, and it's really, really important.

If I had felt in any way that me not running was going to put this seat in jeopardy, that it was going to be hard to win this seat.

Now, the people that are running hard to win this seat are working really, really hard, and I'm so grateful for them.

So it's not easy, but I have full confidence that we will keep this seat and that we'll have a great next Minnesota Senate.

So did you retire because you're an old lady, which you just said, or is it because, which I don't believe,

or because you've had enough of this?

I think, I mean, it's because

I don't think of myself solely as a United States Senator.

I don't want to be a United States Senator until I die.

I don't feel like I'm an old lady, but I also feel like there are other things that I want to do.

Now,

there was a really interesting question a lot of people asked me, which was like, well, if we had won the presidency or if we had won the, you know, kept the Senate, would you have made a different decision?

And I don't think that I would have.

We continued to make the decision.

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

Yours comes from Amanda Littman, co-founder and president of Run for Something,

who was doing a lot of stuff around, especially young people running for office.

Let's listen to it.

Senator Smith, thank you for modeling the kind of leadership we need more of.

By retiring and stepping away, you are showing us what true selfless patriotism looks like right now.

So thank you.

Why is it so hard for so many of your colleagues to do the same?

Can you make a hypothetical argument to them that they too should be retiring and make this their last term?

I just, I don't think they can take it from us on the outside.

I think they need to hear it from one of you all.

Go ahead.

Hypothetically speaking,

you know, it reminds me,

sometimes Archie and I, my husband and I, will be walking around the lake, and someone will come up to me and they'll say something like, thank you for retiring.

And I will immediately turn to Archie and say, like, they liked me, they thought I was doing a good job.

It's not that they didn't, you know, let me explain this.

So,

I mean,

I think people get this idea that their whole identity is their job.

And this happens in all different sectors of our society.

I mean, in the corporate world, there's usually a secession plan in place.

But also, many have to retire at 65, 70.

Yeah, that's right.

That's right.

And I think, honestly, I think too many of my colleagues have this idea that I'll just stay here unless something changes or unless I shouldn't stay here anymore.

They sort of opt, they feel like they have to opt out rather than opt in all the time.

And

I mean, there are

tragic examples of people who stayed too long.

Who are, you know, I think of Diane Feinstein, who I looked up to so much when I was a young student at Stanford, and she was such an icon.

And she stayed way longer than she should have.

And why did that happen?

Why did her staff allow that to happen?

Why did her family allow that to happen?

Because sometimes it's just easier to stay.

What would you say to them?

What I would say is,

because I know my colleagues, I would say you should think of your legacy.

And what do you want your legacy to be in terms of the work that you've done?

But what, think about your legacy in terms of paving the way for the next generation of leaders who are going to step in and who are going to do great work that you made, you did not, you not only did I do great work myself, but I made space for the next generation of young leaders to step in, not when they're 50 or 60 or 70, but now.

So

you told the New York Times that part of the problem with the Senate right now was we can't get shit done, which is...

Sometimes I'm pretty direct.

Okay.

I think that you are accurate in that assessment.

What would you do to make it more appealing and less toxic to young people to make those moves?

Well, so we have a huge problem with how much money it costs to run for office.

And so I don't think we can stop talking about how we need campaign finance reforms so that it is feasible for somebody to to run for office.

I mean, this is the other thing.

Who would you have had to raise to run if you ran again?

Well, Minnesota is a relatively inexpensive state to run in.

So I probably would have had to have raised somewhere between $15 and $20 million.

Which is not a small amount.

Now, John Ossoff, who is running in Georgia, raised $11 million in one quarter to pay for his race.

John Tester, I mean, for God's sake, he raised, you know, tens and tens and, I mean, $70, $80 million.

I mean, he could have taken taken everybody out for a steak dinner

many times over

I mean that's think of the corruption of that what that what that really means not you know what I understand that that the power of the money in this what about term limits would you suggest you know why not

because I you can't run the New York Times after you're 65 years old you can't be in military you can't why not have term limit that design limits age limits because I think that takes the power away from all the people in this room and all of the Minnesotans somebody else, some legislature somewhere is saying, I'm going to decide when Amy Klobuchar or Tina Smith can't run anymore, rather than you, the people of this state.

Why can't we, the people of the state, pass a term limit?

Why can't like that?

I mean, we could.

We could.

Why don't, would you think that would be a good idea?

If everybody, if there was like a constitutional amendment or something like that, even that I think I would have, I mean, I don't, I would probably vote against that because I am tying the hands of voters who are going to be making decisions about who they want to have to represent them 20, 30, 40 years from now.

So I just fundamentally think that term limits are taking power away from voters.

But,

and I should say,

people are staying too damn long in their jobs.

What about mental acuity testing?

You seem sharp.

If you passed it, would you have to stay?

Oh, no, but you can stay.

But you can stay.

You didn't answer.

That's all right.

I'll let you off on that one.

We'll be back in a minute.

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So let's finish up talking about the Democrats, the feckless Democrats.

You saved the easy part for last, I can tell.

Yeah, so in the 2024 Democratic primaries, you roasted Minnesota Democrat former Congressman Dean Phillips, who launched a long shot campaign to challenge President Biden.

After Phillips lost in New Hampshire, you said, quote, he's staying on the ballot in South Carolina because he can't spell Phillips with only one L.

Do you regret those jokes now, in hindsight, how

he was one of the few Democrats willing to acknowledge what voters were seeing and saying about Biden?

And I'll tell you, Scott and I got on pivot got enormous amounts of pushback from pointing out what was quite obvious to anyone with eyes.

And again, we're not doctors, but it seemed the problem early on.

So talk a little bit about that.

Well, so here's how I see it.

I mean,

Biden shouldn't have run,

I don't think.

And I think that he came to that conclusion too late.

And I think that those of us

who

were in this, you know, I could just, I'll speak to myself, I'll speak from my own perspective.

When it became obvious that he was going to run, and I was not one of the five people that had any influence over that decision, it seemed to me that there was only one thing to do, which is to try to make sure if he was going to run, that he was going to win.

And that's why I questioned what Dean was doing, because I did not think that it was going to be helpful to the cause of having Biden win, given that he was going to be our candidate, obviously.

I think it's quite interesting.

I had been reading

Kamala's book, which

1700.

And you're talking to her in a couple of days.

And

it's quite interesting to read what she, reading that book, I really recommend it.

I'm good friends with Kamala.

It's a little bit like reading somebody's diary,

but in a good way, not like you weren't supposed to.

She also kind of asked, what should I have done differently?

but then also realizing it would have seemed so self-serving if she had you know gone into you know steve rashetty or that handful of people um mike donlin who were you know close to the president um so

you don't think she should have said something publicly if they weren't going to listen to her i think that if she had

think of what would have happened to her

And I think she was honestly making this, I mean, like, we all know we were wrong now.

But if she had done that,

as far as anybody can tell, and he was going to run, she would have been undermining him.

She would have been making it harder for him to win, given that he was going to run.

And that was this sort of horrible circular logic that we were all caught in

in that moment.

And then when we had the disastrous debate and it became clear to me in that moment that this was never going to, we had to change.

Why did it take Nancy Pelosi to say, step down or else?

Why was there not more of stepping stepping forward?

And I understand, I agree, it's very difficult for Harris to have done that.

At the same time,

it was pretty obvious there were problems, cognitive problems, for most people.

So,

what has to change in politics where we don't just go along?

And you know, she said it's the ego of one man, right?

That's essentially what Kamala says, which is that it shouldn't be left up to just the one person.

So, why did it take until Nancy Pelosi decided to put her jacket on and go down there and see

she is truly the scariest grandma.

Yeah.

And I think

I'm joking, but I mean it goes to the gravitas and the power that she still wields.

And

I was in a meeting with, it was probably four days before the president announced that he was going to step down.

And this was a meeting of Senate Democrats.

And we had the

45 of us were quite sure that he needed to step down.

And they, you know, the

kind of brain trust of the Biden campaign came in to basically tell us that everything was going to be fine.

I've never felt so gaslit in my life.

Well, maybe

previous, you know, before Donald Trump.

And,

you know, we all said, you know, this is not going to work.

You have to understand that this is over.

And then, then, you know, Pelosi did what she did, others did what they did, and he ultimately reached the conclusion that he did.

But as I said, it was too late.

And too late for her to build.

Too late for her.

So going back to the Gallup poll that found record low favorability for the Democratic Party among all voters, it's low partly

because Democrats have historically a dim view of their party.

Between now and midterm elections, what are the three concrete things they can do?

Obviously, you have Gavin Newsom doing a very muscular attack at Trump.

People seem to like it.

His numbers have risen rather dramatically.

Rahm Emanuel is another person advising for more muscularity.

I'm not using this in a gender-specific way, but it's more toughness, more

aggression, and everything else.

So, what do Democrats need to do to win back their own voters and convince others to go with them besides Trump sucks?

So, right.

So,

we can't just accomplish this by telling people how bad Donald Trump is.

People already actually believe that he's pretty bad.

Even Republicans are starting to think that he's pretty bad.

And so that is just the base.

But that doesn't make you like Democrats.

Exactly, right.

Exactly.

So

I think of a handful of things that we need to do.

I mean, one, We are struggling right now because we don't have a national leader.

Gavin, it's interesting.

I've been thinking a lot about Newsom too.

I don't know if he is what we need, if he is the thing,

but we are struggling because we don't have a person at the top who can kind of guide us through this.

And the caucus leaders are never going to be that person right now.

So two other things that I think we have to think about.

One is that we have to get much more clarity about what we are for and not just what we are against.

And in my book,

in my book,

We have to make it clear that we are going to fight against the concentrated, powerful interests in this country that are taking all the money and leaving everybody else with the crumbs.

And that is not a right-wing or left-wing idea.

That is actually what people believe about what is wrong in this country.

And too often, Democrats have been in the position of sort of defending the status quo, sort of trying to defend institutions that folks fundamentally don't trust.

And until we get our brains around the fact that our sort of

neoliberal approach to politics is is not what people want, and in fact, they feel talked down to and dismissed, we are not going to find a path out of the wilderness.

If you don't feel like your kids are going to have a chance to buy, or even you are going to have a chance to buy a home and have a chance to do well, to earn enough money that you can even take a vacation once in a while, and Democrats don't have a solution for that, then we have to be able to be providing solutions.

And this is, I think, where we are getting it wrong in our party right now, is that there's this big debate about, oh, you know, we don't want to be too progressive or we want to be more moderate, but this is not a moderate, progressive continuum.

This is about being for the 80% of what Americans want.

They want their family to be able to own a home.

They want their kids to be able to have child care.

They want to be able to afford their health insurance.

And we have been sort of like, oh, but we have a policy for that.

And so that I think is the really important thing we have to do.

But then there's the last thing, which is that we are not actually talking to the voters that we think we are talking to.

This is a tactical problem.

And you know this as well as anybody.

The Democratic Party spent literally billions of dollars advertising on television

to

on MSNBC and CNN.

Where do you think Americans are getting their news right now?

Facebook.

Right.

Social media platforms, podcasts.

They're getting it from you.

They're getting it from, you know, Aaron Parnass.

They're getting it from Brian Tyler Cohen.

And

we have to get on top of that and figure out how to communicate and connect with people in the places where they're getting the news.

And we did not do that nearly well enough.

And that is, I think, one of the reasons.

Trump did very well.

This is something that he did extremely well.

I mean, we were, you know, as deplorable as the words that came out of Charlie Kirk's mouth were, he understood that you have to go and talk to young voters in a very specific,

you have to be there.

And I think that's, I've been working on that with our caucus, with Corey Booker, and I think this is a place where another very tangible thing we have to do better.

Gosh, you sound like you're running for something.

I'd like to let you all know right now.

Would you like to run for president?

No.

That was a pause.

That was an interesting pause.

No.

No.

No.

No.

No.

But when you, but there are people running for president, several of them from Minnesota, apparently.

There's a vice presidential candidate and Minnesota Governor Tim Walls.

Amy Klobucher, I'm sure, will make another run for it.

Have you backed anybody in this state or elsewhere?

What do you want in a presidential candidate?

I believe that

We have a great governor and a great United States Senator.

Wow, well done.

Are you a little disappointed?

I'm not.

You can say what you want now.

You can say what you would you vote for.

So I actually think that what we need, I really, I don't know who I will vote for and I don't know who I will support, but I am looking for somebody new.

I am looking for,

I'm looking for like the national version of

this oyster farmer who's running against Susan Collins in Maine or the guy who owns the

beer company or Dan Osborne in Nebraska or Mary Peltola in Alaska.

I'm looking for younger fresh voices, people who have the capacity, even a Pete Buttigieg.

I'm saying even because he's been on the national stage.

It's interesting you didn't mention someone who did very well, Doran Mandani, with young voters.

Exactly.

I mean I mentioned him as well.

This is the kind of

you know Too often, I think our party has developed these sort of gray beard gatekeepers who are deciding who's going to do well and who isn't.

And we have to trust trust people who are willing to be bold.

What is your prediction right now of winning the House, assuming a free and fair election without a lot of Trump nonsense, which you're going to get?

Which, of course, is a big assumption, but we have to work.

Do you think this is a moment that will happen?

Because everyone's relying on these 2026 elections, I think, a little more than that.

All I know how to do is to have is to have hope and then turn that hope into action.

And that is, I think, what we have to do.

And I am optimistic.

I am hopeful that we have House candidates that are going to be able to win this election and that that will be the essential stopgap towards what Donald Trump is doing.

And then do you put him in the rearview mirror?

Rah Emanuel said then we put him in the rearview mirror like he doesn't think he's an old man and put him out to pasture.

Well, I mean, I think we all have to get our minds around the fact that, I mean, Trump is a unique talent,

but the MAGA movement that he has built is not going to go away.

And so we have to be prepared for that.

We have to be thinking about our next conversation about J.D.

Vance.

What horribleness is Stephen Miller going to get up to next?

What's going to happen to those people?

He's probably going to run Disney.

Yes.

He'd make it the unhappiest place on earth.

So I have one final question.

What are you going to do next?

I'm curious.

You know, who the hell knows, really?

And

I'm not not being facetious about it.

I will be in this job until January of 2027, and I'm actually very grateful that given the challenges of this moment, that I'm not trying to figure out how to run a campaign at the same time that I'm doing this job.

And then...

Dream job?

Yeah,

I really don't have a dream job.

Sometimes I think that I want to do something that is much more tangible and much more kind of close to the work than sometimes being in the Senate feels like.

But

I probably, honestly, I'll probably take a little bit of a vacation and then see what good trouble I can get up to.

Would you run a university?

I don't know.

I really, I mean, I'm honestly, I really don't know.

I know there's going to be good work to do.

Well, your world is yours, presumably.

All right.

Thank you so much, Senator Smith.

Thank you, everyone.

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

Nishat Kurwa is Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts.

Special thanks to Eric Litke, Annika Robbins, and Steve Bone.

Our engineers are Fernando Aruda and Rick Juan, and our theme music is by Trackademics.

If you're already following the show, we will telepathically coordinate outfits from now on.

If not, Stephen Miller will be replacing Bob Iger.

Go wherever you listen to podcasts, search for On with Carr Swisher, and hit follow.

Thanks for listening to On with Kara Swisher from Podium Media, New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network, and us.

We'll be back on Thursday with more.

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I love how musicians everywhere can rock out with our guitar strings.

A one, two, three, four.

Rock on, Scott.

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