Trump's YOLO Cabinet

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Speaker 3 Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm John Favreau.
I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On today's show, Donald Trump's cabinet pics go from mildly amusing to terrifying in the span of a day.

Speaker 3 Tulsi Gabbard is Director of National Intelligence. Fox News host Pete Hegse is Defense Secretary.
Matt Gates is Attorney General. And the one that broke just before we started recording, RFK Jr.

Speaker 3 as the Secretary of Health and Human Services. What a lineup.
Man, we are

Speaker 4 back into it, aren't we?

Speaker 3 We are.

Speaker 3 Fuck.

Speaker 3 If for a change you want to hear the most hopeful conversation I've had about politics since the election, stick around later for my conversation with New Jersey's new senator-elect, Andy Kim.

Speaker 3 Love Andy Kim. Love Andy Kim.
More Andy Kims, fewer all these other people we're going to talk about.

Speaker 4 That's your take today. It's more Andy Kim's, fewer Matt Gates'.

Speaker 3 That's why people tune in.

Speaker 3 Going out on a ledge.

Speaker 3 All right.

Speaker 3 We're going to have a decidedly less hopeful conversation about these Trump cabinet picks and their confirmation prospects.

Speaker 3 Who knew our favorite nominees would be Marco Rubio and Elise Stefanik?

Speaker 3 Matt Gates knew, that's who. On Monday, he wasn't even on Trump's shortlist for the position.
Two days later, the two men were on a flight to D.C.

Speaker 3 together, and apparently, that's all it took to get the job.

Speaker 3 A Trump advisor told the bulwarks Mark Caputo that the president-elect didn't like the other Attorney General contenders because, quote, they talked about their vaunted legal theories and constitutional bullshit.

Speaker 3 Gates was the only one who said, Yeah, I'll go go over there and start cutting fucking heads.

Speaker 3 Sounds like he nailed the interview. I'm laughing.

Speaker 3 Because I'm crying.

Speaker 3 Don't give me your legal theories and your bullshit about the Constitution. I want you to cut some fucking heads.

Speaker 3 Gates would go from being investigated by the Justice Department for sex trafficking to leading the Justice Department.

Speaker 3 And while that two-year investigation into Gates for sex trafficking didn't lead to any charges, the House Ethics Committee was just about to release a damning report about allegations that Gates had sex with a minor.

Speaker 3 ABC News just broke that the woman in question testified before Congress that she was 17 when she had sex with Matt Gates.

Speaker 3 But anyway, that report's, it's no longer happening because Gates conveniently resigned his seat now that he's been nominated for attorney general.

Speaker 3 The Florida Congressman is one of Trump's most loyal supporters, but he hasn't won any popularity contests in Congress, Dan.

Speaker 3 Here's some of what other Republicans and even Trump supporters have said about Matt Gaetz.

Speaker 4 I served with some real scumbags. Look, Matt Gaetz, he paid minors to have sex with him at drug parties.

Speaker 5 We had all seen the videos he was showing on the House floor that all of us had walked away of the girls that he had slept with. He'd brag about how he would crush ED medicine and chase it with

Speaker 5 an energy drink so he could go all night.

Speaker 6 I would compare him to that toddler that we've all seen at the family barbecue eating toilet paper,

Speaker 6 shoving Cheerios up his nose to get attention. Yeah.

Speaker 3 What a mix of comments.

Speaker 4 Have you seen a toddler eat toilet paper?

Speaker 3 No.

Speaker 3 Oh, nor, I don't, have any of your kids ever put Cheerios up their nose?

Speaker 4 They have put other food up their nose.

Speaker 4 I have a a friend whose kid put a nut so far up his nose he had to go to the hospital. So anything is possible.

Speaker 3 But you do know plenty of people who have crushed boner pills and Red Bulls to,

Speaker 3 right?

Speaker 4 I don't, John. I don't know what crowd you're hanging out with here in L.A., but no, I don't.

Speaker 3 Just check in.

Speaker 3 Anyway, that was Republican Congressman Tony Gonzalez, Republican Senator Mark Wayne Mullen, and Fox commentator Degan McDowell. That's where those came from, not Democrats.

Speaker 3 After the announcement, former Trump National Security Advisor John Bolton said that he thought that Tulsi Gabbard was the worst cabinet pick in history until he heard about Matt Gates.

Speaker 3 Ben Dominick, the very conservative writer who founded the Federalist, wrote, quote,

Speaker 3 Let me be clear, Matt Gates is a sex-trafficking, drug-addicted piece of shit. He is abhorrent.

Speaker 3 There are pools of vomit with more to offer the earth than this STD-riddled testament to the failure of fallen masculinity.

Speaker 4 That's beautiful writing.

Speaker 3 Another fan. Another fan.
A lot of fan mail for Matt Gates. Let's start with what Trump is trying to achieve with this pick.

Speaker 4 Please do. Please do.

Speaker 3 So, you know, one theory is that Gates is just a wrecking ball and will go after,

Speaker 3 you know, all of Trump's enemies. people who've prosecuted Trump, people who've investigated Trump, other people who displeased Trump.

Speaker 3 One theory is that this is just a loyalty test and that Trump wants to see just how high members of Congress will jump for him.

Speaker 3 A third theory that I find less persuasive is that this is somehow a bait and switch and that he's going to backtrack on Gates and then put forward someone nearly as radical but less controversial, and that person will sail through because they're not Matt Gates.

Speaker 3 What do you think here?

Speaker 4 What's your I've seen all three of these theories circulating on the internet. I've seen people, well-credentialed, smart people offering up number three.

Speaker 4 And my question for all of those people are, were you in a fucking coma from 2017 to 2021?

Speaker 4 I think we can stipulate that Donald Trump is probably smarter than most liberals think he is, but he's not any more strategic. He wants Matt Gaetz there for a couple of reasons.
One,

Speaker 4 picking Matt Gates as AG angers all the people Trump wants to anger. And

Speaker 4 he gets off on that.

Speaker 3 That's his kink. Mission accomplished.
Yes. Congrats.
Check that box.

Speaker 4 But most importantly and most alarmingly, Matt Gates will investigate anyone Trump wants investigated. And almost as importantly, will not investigate anyone Trump doesn't want investigated.

Speaker 4 Matt Gates is the person on this planet probably most likely to turn the Department of Justice into an arm of the Trump political operation. And that is incredibly scary.

Speaker 4 And that's why Trump wants him. And that's why people in both parties are concerned about this.

Speaker 3 Yeah, we should talk about, look, the focus on Gates' potential sex crimes has really overshadowed all the other issues with making this guy attorney general. What are some of your biggest concerns?

Speaker 4 I mean, that's my biggest one is that he is not a serious individual. He is

Speaker 4 probably one of the most craven people in all of American politics.

Speaker 4 He has basically admitted that he made himself into a pro-Trump person because that was a better way to get attention, get on TV, and gain power within the Republican Party.

Speaker 4 He is clearly, I mean, this is someone who was being investigated for sex trafficking like six months ago and now is leading, we could be leading the department that is investigating him.

Speaker 4 And so he will not, he's not going to be any sort of break on Trump's worst impulses. He'll be an accelerator.
And that's incredibly concerning for all the reasons that people talk about.

Speaker 4 If you had said before the election, if you had tweeted, Trump's going to win and Matt Gates is going to be the AG,

Speaker 4 people would have called you out for being a hysterical liberal, right? Just

Speaker 4 because it seems so ridiculous. And this is what Trump wants to do.
And it is quite concerning. There are a lot of checks and balances within the Justice Department.

Speaker 4 You have a ton of career officials there.

Speaker 4 Matt Gaetz is someone who is not, even Bill Barr, for as bad as he was or Jeff Sesh's for bad as he was, was unwilling to override all of those things for Donald Trump.

Speaker 4 Matt Gaits would certainly do that.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I mean, look, I talk about this with Andy Kim later, but there's this Washington Post story today about how

Speaker 3 officials, former government officials, military officials, Trump administration officials who've spoken out against Trump are like literally packing their bags and figuring out how to like leave the country, at least until they know what happens with the Trump Justice Department, parking assets overseas.

Speaker 3 They're getting advice from lawyers on all this. We talked about this a little on Tuesday.
I mean, it's just, it's, it's stunning. It's shocking that this is happening in the United States of America.

Speaker 3 And of course, like, we don't know how a Gates-run Justice Department would would be, would go. We don't even know if Gates will actually get confirmed or get the job.

Speaker 3 but the potential for abuse is vast.

Speaker 3 And there's a New York Times piece that said, like since the election, one law firm got like three dozen job applications from the Justice Department, from career officials, because what's going to happen is a lot of people at the Justice Department, a lot of career officials, not Democrats, not political apponies, not liberals, just good lawyers who've been there for long, being there under Democratic and Republican presidents, like don't want to stick around to see what Donald Trump and potentially Matt Gates force them to do or not do or go after them for doing their jobs.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 3 look, maybe you're listening to this and you're not an enemy of Donald Trump and you're not worried that he's going to go after you.

Speaker 3 Just the sheer chaos that could take place at the Justice Department, which is responsible for a lot of work that keeps all of us safe and going after a lot of crime, you know, that that could be jeopardized by just having a fucking wrecking ball there.

Speaker 4 Every minute that a Matt Gates Donald Trump-led Justice Department is doing political work to investigate or persecute or prosecute Donald Trump's enemies is a moment that is not being used to stop violent crime, to investigate money laundering, to prevent terrorism or all the other things that happen in the Department of Justice.

Speaker 4 So it just, it matters for everyone, whether you were an MSNBC talking head from 2017 to now, or you're just an average American person who depends in some way, shape, or form on the government to keep you safe.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Let's talk prospects for confirmation.

Speaker 3 Senator John Cornyn, who lost the Senate leadership election, but will be the number two Republican on the Judiciary Committee, said he and his colleagues will, quote, absolutely want to see the text of this House ethics report about Gates.

Speaker 3 A few other Republican senators have made comments that suggest they might oppose Gates' nomination. Can you see a scenario where this thing goes down?

Speaker 4 I can. I absolutely can see a scenario where it goes down.
This is, he can only lose, we assume, four votes, presuming what happens in Pennsylvania.

Speaker 4 And he probably has already lost two in Collins and Murkowski. Is Mitch McConnell going to vote for Matt Gates?

Speaker 4 Now that he's not a vote.

Speaker 3 You're looking at like a Tom Tillis, Todd Young, like some, some of these more like older establishment.

Speaker 3 You know, they're mall mega establishment now, but still sort of more establishment type Republicans. Yeah, who knows?

Speaker 4 I mean, the senators have an ability, if they want,

Speaker 4 if they want, to buck Trump in ways that the House does not. Because some of these folks, like Senator Jon Thune, are not up for re-election until after Donald Trump is out of the White House.

Speaker 4 Someone is going to deliver a report to a group of senators that every,

Speaker 4 all 100 senators will be able to read, that is going to be a eyewitness account and firsthand testimony of a 17-year-old girl who claims she had sex with Matt Gates.

Speaker 4 And then he's going to ask these people to vote for him to be the chief law enforcement officer of the United States of America a week later.

Speaker 4 So I think there's a real chance.

Speaker 3 Now we can get into that. On the other hand, on the other hand, they just supported Donald Trump for president.

Speaker 4 Yes, yes. So they're, I mean, yes.

Speaker 3 They were all in for the guy who's a convicted felon.

Speaker 4 I am, look, you would lose a lot of money betting on the moral courage and patriotism of Senate Republicans, but there is a possibility this goes down because there is always a bridge too far.

Speaker 4 Cabinet, there is always a cabinet choice or two that fails for various reasons. As we look at it here, and it is a vicious competition, I will tell you that.

Speaker 4 But as we currently look at it, this is the most likely of Donald Trump's cabinet nominations to go down.

Speaker 3 Well, next up. Yeah, let's go through them all.

Speaker 3 RFK Jr.

Speaker 3 You might remember a few days before the election, CNN's Caitlin Collins asked Trump transition co-chair Howard Lutnick if Kennedy would be in charge of health and human services.

Speaker 3 His answer, of course not.

Speaker 3 What he actually meant by that is, of course.

Speaker 4 It's easy to misspeak on live television.

Speaker 3 Yeah, no, it was just missing a word there.

Speaker 3 Kennedy falsely believes that childhood vaccines cause autism, has spread misinformation about COVID and COVID vaccines, and has already pledged to remove fluoride from drinking water.

Speaker 3 Former acting director of the CDC, Dr. Richard Besser, told NBC that RFK Jr.
as HHS secretary would, quote, imperil the health of people across the country.

Speaker 3 Though Kennedy does have one unlikely supporter, Jared Polis, the Democratic governor of Colorado, who said he's excited by the news and thinks Kennedy will help make America healthy again by shaking up HHS and FDA.

Speaker 3 Okay, first general reaction to RFK Jr. as our next health and human services secretary.

Speaker 4 Do I think there's a problem and a potential danger with the top healthcare official in the federal government being someone who sows conspiracy theories about vaccines?

Speaker 4 Yes, I think that is deeply dangerous. And if RFK Jr.
is confirmed or ends up in the position one way or another, I think that will lead to more measles, more more smallpox,

Speaker 4 more whooping cough and all the other things that vaccines have been keeping Americans safer because now you have a very famous, very prominent former Democrat Trump administration official spreading those lies from a position of great power and authority.

Speaker 4 So I think that's deeply, deeply dangerous.

Speaker 3 I think.

Speaker 4 I, Polis' statement is very interesting. People are very, very mad about it.
And he did a follow-up tweet where he made the point that what RFK Jr.

Speaker 4 says about vaccines is scientifically, has been proven false. Scientifically, it is absolutely not true and is deeply dangerous.

Speaker 4 But if we as Democrats say we follow the science, then some of the other things that he is talking about, like the dangers

Speaker 4 from factory farming of pesticides and chemicals. If you follow the science, there's also ways in which we should reform our government there.
And this is a big thing.

Speaker 4 And I'm sure it's big in Colorado. It is big where we live here in California.

Speaker 4 There is a lot of skepticism about big pharma, big food companies, what huge greedy corporations are feeding our children.

Speaker 4 And RFK has been sitting in this wellness space for a very long time talking about these things. I've said this on this podcast before.
This is something my wife brings up all the time.

Speaker 4 She follows a lot of influencers on Instagram. She has constantly fed people in the wellness space who are RFK adjacent and have become MAGA adjacent because of RFK's association with Trump.

Speaker 4 And so the thing I think about this is it's very dangerous. We should do everything we possibly can to stop them.

Speaker 4 We have to be careful about talking specifically at the vaccine stuff and not making ourselves the defenders of big pharma, big food, factory farms, and all of those other things.

Speaker 4 I think that's what Pulse was trying to get at. And he has a bit of a point there.

Speaker 3 I fucking love big pharma. What are you talking about?

Speaker 4 I'm going to get to this at the end, but this is

Speaker 4 that giant pit we're about to jump right back into. That's where we're headed.

Speaker 3 I think the reason that this is particularly combustible is, to your point, one result, unfortunate result of the pandemic, one of fucking many, is that trust in public health institutions has fallen by a lot, not just among Republicans.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 we don't have to go into why that is now, because you could spend a whole episode on it. But we had a fast-moving, mutating, changing virus.

Speaker 3 And the CDC and our public health agencies weren't always as nimble as they could have been.

Speaker 3 And also maybe even the best staffed agencies that made no mistakes still would have appeared to be changing their minds all the time because the virus kept changing, right?

Speaker 3 And,

Speaker 3 you know, you had vaccine mandates and not vaccine mandates and masks and this, and then there's this variant and this variant, right?

Speaker 3 Like, so trust in public health institutions has gone down, right? So into that steps RFK Jr., who has been peddling unfounded conspiracies and misinformation about public health for a long time.

Speaker 3 And some of the things he said about big pharma, absolutely true. Some of the things he said about, you know, environmental pollution and big corporations polluting the environment, absolutely true.

Speaker 3 The problem with him is like, he doesn't necessarily follow the science at all. No.

Speaker 3 And when the science tells him something that he doesn't want to hear that flies against his own preconceived notions, his own beliefs, his own theories. He just ignores it, right?

Speaker 3 He is, you know, he has embraced raw milk. FDA is saying that drinking it is risky, particularly amid a current bird flu epidemic among dairy cows.
But, you know, he says, go for it.

Speaker 3 He's also said, like, he's going to go say to the National Institute of Health Scientists. The scientists at the NIH are the best in the world.

Speaker 3 They have discovered some of the best cures to disease and scientific and medical innovations in the world.

Speaker 3 And he's going to say, he said he's going to say to to them, this was just recently, thank you for your public service. We're going to give infectious disease a break for about eight years.

Speaker 3 It's like, yeah, like, wouldn't we all love to give infectious disease a break? But it's not going to give us a break.

Speaker 3 So we might as well keep studying it and not lay off a bunch of scientists at the NIH.

Speaker 3 In his book,

Speaker 3 his book that he wrote in 2021,

Speaker 3 he claimed in the book that Dr. Fauci and Bill Gates are members of a vaccine cartel trying to kill patients by denying them hydroxychloroquine hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin.

Speaker 3 He also argued that this cartel secretly funded doctors to produce fraudulent studies showing that the drugs were ineffective against COVID and that they did so in order to orchestrate global lockdowns and accelerate the construction of 5G cellular networks,

Speaker 3 which of course are bad.

Speaker 3 That was from the Atlantic. Someone had read his book, thankfully, so we didn't have to.

Speaker 3 I mean, I just, you know, it's like, but I take your point and that I think that the,

Speaker 3 what we can't do is just like wave him away as a nut because for a lot of people, they're just hearing about him for the first time or they don't know all of his theories.

Speaker 3 And so I think when you're talking about RFK Jr. to your friends, you kind of have to go into what he's done.
We talked about this when Luttnick first said, you know, he might. or might not run HHS.

Speaker 3 And I was telling about the measles outbreak he helped. In Samoa, yes.

Speaker 4 He personally caused a measles outbreak that cost more than 80 lives.

Speaker 3 Yeah, and everyone can go read it and see for yourself. You know, it's like, you know, if he wasn't singularly responsible, he certainly helped out.

Speaker 3 He lifted up some of the people, the anti-vaxxers in Samoa

Speaker 3 who were

Speaker 3 trying to stop these kids from getting vaccinated and a bunch died. So like, look, the facts are all out there.
Just, you know, go do your own research, as RFK Jr. might say.

Speaker 4 I mean, he is just, I think when you...

Speaker 4 The part you just read from his book is that he is that he really is sort of a maestro at spinning a conspiracy theory, taking legitimate concerns that people have and real questions that are worth asking and then taking that one step further into a very dangerous very incorrect and very unscientific set of solutions that like that that is where he is taking us but what we can't we have to be able to address why his solutions are wrong without seeming like we don't share some of the same concerns about pollution and food quality and pesticides and chemicals in this country big day for the brainworm, huh?

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 4 This is one. Yes, that's exactly right.

Speaker 3 Big day for the brainworm. I also really enjoyed in the New York Times story about Trump announcing him.

Speaker 3 There's just like casually a sentence there.

Speaker 3 In addition to his outside the mainstream views about medicine and health, he has been associated with a number of peculiar activities, like dumping a dead bear in Central Park and supposedly decapitating a whale.

Speaker 3 What are we doing? Big day for roadkill here in America. What are we doing? All right.
Moving on to two people who Trump wants to put in charge of the U.S.

Speaker 3 military and the nation's secrets and spy agencies, Pete Hegseth and Tulsi Gabbard.

Speaker 3 Hegseth is a co-host of Fox and Friends Weekend and an Army vet who loves to criticize today's allegedly woke military.

Speaker 3 He also said as recently as last week, quote, I'm straight up just saying we should not have women in combat roles.

Speaker 3 A reminder that Trump's team is also reportedly drawing up an executive order so that Trump can purge the military of generals he doesn't like or that he thinks are too woke. I don't know.

Speaker 3 Call me crazy. I feel like a weekend cable TV host might not be qualified to run a department of 2 million people.

Speaker 3 But what do I know? I'm just

Speaker 3 a defender of institutions.

Speaker 4 He's a weekday podcast host.

Speaker 3 What do you think about Pete Hagseth?

Speaker 4 For

Speaker 4 years now,

Speaker 4 going back to 2016, I've been making a pretty unfunny joke about how Trump's cabinet picks, staff picks would be just dregs of the Fox News greenroom.

Speaker 4 Well, joke's on me, people, because now he's in charge of the military.

Speaker 3 Now he's in charge of the military.

Speaker 3 You can imagine that Defense Department officials, not just Biden appointees, but people who've worked at the Pentagon for years and years, again, career officials, are sort of terrified by this.

Speaker 3 And again,

Speaker 3 all these nominees fit into different categories. Some of them are crazy.
Some of them are just, you know, they're, they're sort of, they're going to carry out Trump's, you know, revenge wishes.

Speaker 3 And then some of them are just like, have no, most of them actually have no experience or qualifications for the job that they're being nominated for.

Speaker 3 I think this is where Pete Hegseth comes into play. Like the Defense Department is a, that's a big department.
That's a, that's, that's one of the biggest, if not the biggest.

Speaker 3 It is the biggest, right.

Speaker 4 And it is a bigger massive management challenge. Put aside, like, he obviously served in the military.
He's a very decorated veteran.

Speaker 3 Right.

Speaker 4 But running the department is very different.

Speaker 4 And up until this point, his main role in life is to be Steve Doocy's understudy.

Speaker 3 So it's like.

Speaker 3 If that doesn't prepare you to run DOD, I don't know what that is.

Speaker 4 The fact that he's the Fox and Friends weekend anchor is just so fucking funny.

Speaker 4 Like Fox and Friends anchor would be funny, but Fox and Friends Weekend is just so much funnier. It's not funny per se because that guy might be in charge of our military.

Speaker 4 And his confirmation prospects went through the roof with RFK Jr. and Matt Gates.

Speaker 4 We're always lining up to vote for Pete Hag Seth now because

Speaker 4 if they have to vote against one of these other two people.

Speaker 3 So then there's Tulsi Gabbard. So she started off as a Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii before going full MAGA, particularly during this campaign.

Speaker 3 During her long political journey over the last decade, she developed

Speaker 3 sort of strange, sympathetic views towards Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad al-Assad and Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, both of whom have committed crimes against humanity by slaughtering thousands of their own people.

Speaker 3 She met with Assad,

Speaker 3 secret trip to Syria during the Obama administration while Assad was, again, slaughtering his own people. And she just decided to have a meeting with him.

Speaker 3 Didn't tell anyone, just, you know, just a meeting. Then she said, he's not our enemy.
She defended Putin's invasion of Ukraine. She even opposed U.S.
sanctions on Putin.

Speaker 3 Putin, again, killed thousands of Ukrainians, abducted 20,000 Ukrainian children in this war. The war is still going.

Speaker 3 Didn't want sanctions on Putin. How on earth does this person get a job as the director of national intelligence?

Speaker 4 She ran for the Democratic presidential nomination four years ago.

Speaker 3 I know.

Speaker 4 I know. And now

Speaker 4 she never served on the intelligence committee and is now Donald Trump's MD to be director of national intelligence. What a journey.
What a fast and tumultuous journey to where she is.

Speaker 3 I mean, I'm sure Ben and Tommy will talk, go get into detail about all of this and why it's dangerous on Pod Save the World. But, you know, I was just reading the Politico story about it.

Speaker 3 There's like Western Intel officials from other countries telling Politico, like, you know what? Other countries, including our allies, like may not want to share. intelligence with us anymore.

Speaker 3 And we need that intelligence to like prevent terrorist attacks and other things. And, you know, if they can't trust that like, who the fuck is Tulsi Gabber

Speaker 3 just like freelancing on her own, meeting with dictators, and now she's Trump's pal who's going to be the director of national intelligence despite not having any experience.

Speaker 4 I mean, just to put in perspective the importance of this position.

Speaker 4 The director of national intelligence was a position created after 9-11 when all of our separate intelligence agencies and the intelligences we were getting from the CIA, from Defense Department, from the FBI were not brought together, which allowed 9-11 to happen.

Speaker 4 So we created this position.

Speaker 4 This is a serious position that is supposed to manage all these various intelligence agencies, bring them together and make sure that we are getting the best information to protect the United States homeland from terrorism and to understand what's happening abroad.

Speaker 4 And we've handed that someone with no experience who was seemingly just a pick to troll the people that Donald Trump hates the most in the intelligence agencies.

Speaker 4 Like it is like that is the theme through all of these.

Speaker 4 Like he picked Marco Rubio for whatever reason reason to be at State. And he picked the random New York Congressman, former Congressman Lee Zeldon at EPA.
But these are

Speaker 4 little

Speaker 4 maggot hand grenades to roll into the parts of the deep state, the quote-unquote deep state that he hates the most, to piss people off the most, to render these agencies unfunctionable.

Speaker 3 Well, I was going to say, in the first term,

Speaker 3 You know, you could look at some of his appointments and think, that person's a real Yahoo, but there's an entire agency, a lot of career officials, and maybe if that person doesn't know what the hell they're doing, then, you know, there's an agency full of people who do know what they're doing, and they will try to work with this person and, you know, and maybe help them succeed because we all want the government to succeed, right?

Speaker 3 Like we want all these agencies to do the jobs that they're supposed to do. This time around, it's different because...

Speaker 3 Trump and his team have been making plans to try to fire not only the political appointees, get rid of of the political appointees at all these agencies, but the career officials. And

Speaker 3 either they fire some of these career officials or some of these career officials might leave because they don't want to stick around for this. And then you're right.

Speaker 3 Then you just have chaos and you have a bunch of agencies that don't have the people they need to actually just do, perform their basic functions.

Speaker 3 And that to me is a real, real concern, aside from just the character and qualifications of the people who will lead them.

Speaker 4 I wrote about the Gates and Tulsi Gabbard appointments and message box this morning,

Speaker 4 which caused me to go back and look at all of Trump's first set of cabinet appointees.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 it was a very, like his approach was very different. He was clearly trying back in 2017, trying to send a signal to the Republican establishment that he was a serious person, right?

Speaker 4 Like Rex Tillerson was the CEO of Exxon. Like obviously he was not a foreign diplomat, but he was a serious person, right? Jim Mattis at defense.

Speaker 3 Tilly was fired on the toilet.

Speaker 4 Yeah, exactly. I mean, it did not end well for most of these people.
John Kelly, former general at Holmes. Like, these were,

Speaker 4 they weren't like, they were not good at their jobs. Most of them didn't last very long, but they were at least people who, on paper, for the most part, were qualified for this job.

Speaker 4 This is, you are swinging in the exact opposite direction here. He's specifically picking people who are not qualified for the jobs who will likely go in there and really fuck shit up, right?

Speaker 4 That seems to be his plan.

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Speaker 3 A BetterHelp ad.

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Speaker 3 So big question on all these nominations is how and whether they get confirmed. We talked about this a little with Gates.

Speaker 3 We mentioned on Tuesday's pod that Trump might try to recess appoint his entire cabinet.

Speaker 3 And just as a refresher, this would require either House Speaker Mike Johnson or new Senate Majority Leader John Thune to adjourn Congress, which they can try to do with a simple majority vote.

Speaker 3 If either the House or Senate refuses to adjourn, so like say Mike Johnson says, yeah, we're going to adjourn, but John Thune says, yeah, that's sort of crazy, I don't want to do it.

Speaker 3 The Constitution says Trump, the president, can break the tie and adjourn Congress himself. And then, once that happens, could just appoint his entire cabinet.
No confirmation hearings, no nothing.

Speaker 3 On the other hand, he may not have to do this.

Speaker 3 He may be able to just confirm his nominees through the regular Senate confirmation process since a lot of Republicans seem like they want to give Trump whatever he wants.

Speaker 3 Here's how a House Republican, Troy Nels of Texas, and a Senate Republican, Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, see it.

Speaker 9 There was a mandate last week, Liz, that said, hey, we want President Trump to have his team. We want to take back our country.
Republicans, if you're not on the team, get out of the way.

Speaker 10 There's no question he's the leader of our party. So now he's got a mission statement.
His mission and his goals and objectives, whatever that is, we need to embrace it.

Speaker 4 All of it.

Speaker 10 Every single word.

Speaker 9 Again, President Trump and J.D. Vance are going to be running the Senate.

Speaker 10 If Donald Trump says jump three feet high and scratch your head, we all jump three feet high and scratch our heads. That's it.

Speaker 4 That's actually, John, that three feet high thing you may notice. It's a quote from the Federalist Papers.

Speaker 3 Yes.

Speaker 3 You know.

Speaker 3 Even I thought when

Speaker 3 Harris Wallace campaign and Democrats and the Biden-Harris campaign before that made a lot out of dictator on day one, it's like, you know, is that really believable?

Speaker 3 And Trump was kind of joking when he said it. He's like, I'm only going to be a dictator on the first day.

Speaker 3 And then you hear these Republicans be like, yeah, no, no, he can do whatever he wants. Forget Congress.
Congress?

Speaker 3 What are they even doing there?

Speaker 3 Yeah, it's not correct. Like, do you think we're headed?

Speaker 3 I feel like there is a very good chance that we are headed for this recess appointment gambit.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 the reason is because, first of all, it is shock and awe. It is just like you said with some of these appointments, it's Trump basically saying, fuck everyone.

Speaker 3 I'm in charge. I'm the king here.
I don't need Congress. I'm going to put whoever I want in my cabinet.
And you people try to stop me.

Speaker 3 Or maybe he doesn't have to do it because even the threat of it happening just makes them all say, sure.

Speaker 3 Maybe he loses Murkowski and Collins, but maybe he doesn't lose the rest. And then that's that because they just don't.

Speaker 3 I mean, some people, I saw Robert Costa, the CBS reporting this, that some Republicans in the Senate are privately telling him, I don't know if we really have the appetite to stand up to him right now.

Speaker 4 I think he is going to get the overall majority of his cabinet picks one way or the other. Like most of them are just going to pass through the Senate with 51 or 52 votes.
Right.

Speaker 4 He's going to, or J.D. Vance will finally find a useful function in life and he will head down there and start breaking ties.

Speaker 4 I think the recess appointment is a very real live option.

Speaker 4 There are, and we should talk to the legal experts here, there are some real questions about whether those appointments can stand.

Speaker 4 And it is, and we looked at this, we did recess appointments in the Obama administration. They got struck down.
And because we did it over a short period, which the Supreme Court in its

Speaker 4 very partisan judgment decided did not count for, that did not count as recess for Barack Obama. A Democrat must need an extended recess.
We'll see what they think about with Trump.

Speaker 4 But as Tommy pointed out on your Tuesday pod, there are some reasons to believe that the Supreme Court may not take the recess appointment thing super seriously because it's an outdated concept.

Speaker 3 Which I believe Scalia before he died and in the opinion about the Obama thing said that like

Speaker 3 recess appointments

Speaker 3 as they were conceived of in the Constitution, it's just not, it's not what happens anymore.

Speaker 4 Yes, it was when people had to ride their horses back from. one of the 13 original states to get back in time to make an appointment, as opposed to getting on a plane the next day.

Speaker 4 There are some consequences going the recess appointment route.

Speaker 4 One, if you have to recess appoint your own appointees when you control the Senate, it is just a massive blaring billboard sign of weakness and incompetence. So that's one.

Speaker 3 Two. Or, or, or strength in that you don't need the senate.
And you're like, I don't give a shit what these Republicans think.

Speaker 4 In past,

Speaker 4 it could be that way. It could be that way.
It's generally, that may seem strong in some circles with your base.

Speaker 4 I'm not sure that's going to be as popular as you think it is with the broader electorate, which generally thinks that people should work together

Speaker 4 and often votes for bipartisan government and will be one of the many things we'll see in the many ads uh and about in 2026 about taking back the house and the senate two is at least in the old days that you would pay a price because senators cared about their authority right and so if you don't allow me the chair of the judiciary committee to offer my advice and consent on the attorney general that i'm going to make you pay for it through the funding process the oversight process all of that i'm not really counting on that happening this time um but the other thing is is that these appointments expire at the end of this Congress.

Speaker 4 So you can appoint Matt Gates for two years, but in two years, you might have a Democratic Senate. And so now what are you going to do?

Speaker 4 You're not getting someone like Matt Gates through the next time. Right.
And so this is where that fake third strategy sort of comes in.

Speaker 4 This is not Trump's plan, but let's say we go through this whole Gates thing. The ethics report comes out.
Senators get queasy. They didn't vet, which is an important point.

Speaker 4 They clearly vetted none of these people. Gates wasn't on the shortlist.

Speaker 3 Yeah, that's what I said. Vetting.

Speaker 3 He wasn't. So we are.

Speaker 3 It happened in a plane flight.

Speaker 4 This is a month-long process where every reporter in America is going to be digging into everything Gates has said and done. He's going to have to turn over all of his financial records.

Speaker 4 Like, it's going to be drip, drip, drip, drip, drip for a very long time. Trump hates bad press.

Speaker 4 So he pulls the plug and then he puts, I don't know, Judge Steen Pierrow up and she flies right through.

Speaker 4 I don't know what is going to happen here, but this, this pro, a recess appointment process is not risk-free or penalty-free for Trump.

Speaker 3 So here's a question for you about the political implications of this.

Speaker 3 Because one lesson, unfortunately, I feel like I have learned from this last campaign is that for voters who decided the election, who do not pay close attention, who are not high-information voters, norms, institutions, process fights, bad press about a crazy person that Donald Trump may or may not be associated with or have hired don't fucking matter.

Speaker 3 And what people really care about is something that might affect them personally and so i i wonder if you know there's this moment where donald trump does a recess appointment thing like that and everyone you know you can imagine you can imagine the banners on msnbc we'll be talking about it here right

Speaker 3 oh my gosh the constitution what's he doing he's a dictator and then voters are just like i don't know maybe he should uh maybe he should i don't know what's going on maybe he should just have his cabinet maybe he should uh let's just let's just let's just let him do some stuff first and see what he does.

Speaker 4 So I got a lot of thoughts here. So fuck a lot.
Great. Okay.

Speaker 3 First, that's what I asked you the question.

Speaker 4 That pro that argument works much better when it's the other party.

Speaker 4 If it's Democrats blocking his cabinet, when it's his own party,

Speaker 4 that's a different story. This is Obama was able to go out and say, they are preventing me from getting my Secretary of Labor.
So I'm going to use a recess appointment.

Speaker 4 They've been blocking him for months and months and months. Mitch McConnell is people are saying he shouldn't even get a cabinet.
So he went out and made a recess appointment.

Speaker 4 Different story if it is your own party you can't get on board.

Speaker 4 But I think the broader point here, and this goes for how we talk about all of these nominees.

Speaker 4 It goes for how we talk about the Doge Commission and all these other things is the lesson here is, I think, and this is the lesson we have to learn from the first Trump presidency is.

Speaker 4 When Trump does bad things and he attacks people and institutions and science and the FBI and the CIA, our natural reaction cannot be to become the defender of the status quo.

Speaker 4 This is partly what Jared Poles was trying to get at, perhaps maybe not as articulately as possible, with the RFK thing.

Speaker 4 We cannot end this by being that we're going to defend all the institutions in this country, all the processes, the political system, all of those things. We have to.

Speaker 3 It's like you might have tried to

Speaker 3 upend the FBI, but we have 35 former FBI officials who have signed a letter and now it's fucking checkmate.

Speaker 4 Oh, you think your egg prices are too high? Wait till you see my letter from 35 Ivy League Nobel Prize winning economists.

Speaker 3 Yes. This is, yeah.

Speaker 4 I'm with you.

Speaker 4 This is, I can, I feel in just like, we haven't seen a lot from elected Democrats yet. They've been sort of holding their powder dry here to their credit.

Speaker 4 But when you sort of see the cable conversation, the Twitter conversations, we're right back into it. We are, this is how, this is how we got ourselves in this mess.

Speaker 4 We are becoming the elite defenders of the status quo at a time of historic cynicism about politics and distrust in institutions.

Speaker 4 The way in which we navigate that, and this is a much broader, longer conversation, is we have to become the party of

Speaker 4 reform. We have to be the party who wants to reform the system.
We want to take the money out of politics. We want to stop the corporate influence.

Speaker 4 And we're going to have a huge opportunity to do that because, oh, I don't know.

Speaker 4 The world's richest man is pulling the strings on the president right now while he's waiting for billions of dollars in Defense Department contracts for his personal companies.

Speaker 3 I mean, I saved that for last, the best for last, because I do think of all the shit that we've talked about, the Doge Commission might present the

Speaker 3 best opportunity for Democrats here because,

Speaker 3 so

Speaker 3 Doge, Department of Government Efficiency, also the name of a fucking Bitcoin

Speaker 3 that Elon Musk has or whatever started. I don't know what the fuck you do.
I don't know how to talk about that.

Speaker 3 Anyway, so Vivek Ramaswamy, Elon Musk, running running the Department of Government Efficiency, not really a government department, but something they're providing outside advice for.

Speaker 3 I thought originally it was just like this blue ribbon commission and they could go like, I made this joke. It's like the MAGA Simpson Bowles Commission.

Speaker 3 So I made this, I made this joke to Max on offline, so people will hear it on Sunday too. And I said, the only people who will be laughing at this are Dan Pfeiffer and Ben Rhodes.

Speaker 3 Tommy. I'm laughing on the outside.

Speaker 4 I'm crying crying on the inside for

Speaker 4 out of some PTSD from having being in the White House or the Simpson Bulls and sadness for you personally for having made that joke.

Speaker 3 Yeah. No,

Speaker 3 you're self-aware about it, so I appreciate that. It's very pathetic of me.
Anyway, so yeah, so some, yeah, some blue, keep them busy. They identify all these cuts.

Speaker 3 And then, of course, you have to, you know, bring it to Congress. And Congress is like, okay, fuck off, whatever.

Speaker 3 But the Washington Post had a story about how the White House is preparing to try a novel strategy for adopting the Doge's recommendations.

Speaker 3 Even if Congress does not, there's some 1974 Act, Impoundment Act, or whatever, where they can, the Trump people think that the president is able to say, oh, well, Congress decided that we have to spend this money, but we don't actually have to spend the money that Congress appropriates.

Speaker 3 Screw them. And basically, you know, the power of the purse is not with Congress, but...
with Donald Trump and Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy. And here's Vivek Ramaswamy previewing its mandate.

Speaker 11 We're not thinking small. We're playing big here because we have a once-in-a-generation mandate right now.

Speaker 11 The American people have voted for drastic reform of the government, and our federal government is broken. Elon and I, I mean, Elon solving major problems of physics.
I came from the world of biology.

Speaker 11 What we're solving here now is not a natural problem. This is a man-made problem.
And when you have a man-made problem, you better darn well have a man-made solution.

Speaker 3 Oh, I forgot that his voice is going to be back. Ooh.

Speaker 3 So Elon Musk had said, like, you know, I think we can cut $2 trillion from the federal government. It's a $6.5 trillion budget.

Speaker 3 Can't cut $2 trillion from the federal budget without cutting Medicare, Social Security, health programs, retirement programs, education programs, programs that people rely on.

Speaker 3 So I don't know. It seems like if they try to do that, it feels like that's something that could be unpopular.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I think the way we have to approach this very strategically.

Speaker 4 Like you and I look at this and a lot of people listen to this look at this and it's like, here are two fucking MAGA clowns with a fake job just running through the government trying to make some proposals.

Speaker 4 And the way a lot of the country will approach this is here are two pretty successful business people looking at an ineffectual and waste-ridden government.

Speaker 3 And by the way, a lot of waste to get rid of in the government. That's like we, we, that's the point.
We have been, oh, Barack Obama was obsessed with this and did not get as far as he wanted to.

Speaker 3 No, we, he wanted to, there were multiple proposals to combine a couple departments. I think we were going to like combine commerce and something else.
I don't know. You're losing your case,

Speaker 4 small business administration. Yes.

Speaker 3 And like, and here's the point: do your salmon joke.

Speaker 3 No, no. We did enough of that during the State of the Union.
Elon Musk and Donald Trump,

Speaker 3 they have this point, which is you go into government, and we tried to do this.

Speaker 3 Like, you try to combine agencies, and suddenly everyone at the agencies and the secretaries, the cabinet officials in those agencies are like, absolutely not. You can't.
Why can't we combine them?

Speaker 3 Why can't we get rid of all this? Because

Speaker 3 they give you a blizzard of words that don't really, they're not a compelling argument, but it's just like the bureaucracy just really does make it hard to reform government. So like that is true.

Speaker 4 This idea is going to be pretty popular. It is like the scene from Dave when he brings his accountant in to work on the federal budget.
Like it is people, people under, it makes sense people into it.

Speaker 4 So the way we should approach it as Democrats is we should

Speaker 4 agree that there is too much waste in government. We should look for places to make it more efficient and work better and be and make us better stewards of tax reductions.

Speaker 4 We should absolutely do that.

Speaker 4 And then we should, and if we should say, if these guys come up with good ideas, we're open to listen to them because we agree government should be more efficient and we should save money.

Speaker 4 Let's see their proposals.

Speaker 4 Let's make them put their cards on the table. What is the $2 trillion? Elon Musk told Tucker Carlson he wanted to eliminate like 300 federal agencies.
What are those agencies?

Speaker 4 Are they going to help people like flood victims? Are they protecting our food, our air and water? Are they preventing diseases? FEMA, what are those? Put them on the table.

Speaker 4 Where are you going to get your utility dollars? You're going to get it for Social Security and Medicare. You're going to get it from education.
You're going to get it from disease prevention.

Speaker 4 Where is that coming from?

Speaker 4 Put it on the table and let's have a big, giant debate about, because they're doing this thing at the exact same moment that Donald Trump and the Republicans are trying to pass a multi-trillion dollar unpaid for tax cut for billionaires and corporations.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 I think that that is the sort of general advice on all of these things, which is think about how an action, not just words, not like Donald Trump said something crazy or Elon Musk said something crazy or or the cabinet secretaries who are all fucking nuts said something crazy, but like we should focus on how these policies and actions and legislation actually affect real people.

Speaker 3 Because I think that is, we sometimes just get caught up in the offensive comments and the craziness and the chaos, which there's plenty of, but voters care about what actually affects them.

Speaker 3 And they could do a lot of damage, all these people. So we'll see.

Speaker 4 As people who work in government and believe as part of our political philosophy that government can and should help people.

Speaker 4 We understand the value of experts and experienced people doing these jobs because we've seen it when there are good people in those jobs and bad people in those jobs, it makes a huge difference.

Speaker 4 That is not how

Speaker 4 most of the public sees this. They don't necessarily think that some of these people that Trump has appointed

Speaker 4 should be disqualified simply because they don't have quote-unquote government experience.

Speaker 4 They just elected Donald Trump twice.

Speaker 3 So they've been pretty clear. Not putting the premium on government.

Speaker 4 They've been pretty clear on what they think about traditional political experience.

Speaker 4 And so the arguments we make about these people, as I think we did around RFK Jr., is, as you point out, how what they will actually do will hurt people.

Speaker 4 And I think an important meta argument, because we want to tie all these people together, is not that it's a bunch of inexperienced clowns, is that Donald Trump is picking a bunch of people who are loyal to him.

Speaker 4 above anything else, who will put Donald Trump's interests first, not your interests. And that is the thread that combines them all.
And I think that's how to talk about this.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I very much agree. Okay, Okay, when we come back from the break, you'll hear my conversation with Congressman and Senator-elect Andy Kim.
Two quick things before we do that.

Speaker 3 On this week's episode of Polar Coaster, Dan, you, looks at what the polls got right, where they fell short, and what we still don't know.

Speaker 3 Then Caroline Reston joins to tackle listeners' burning questions. Anything you want to say about this episode?

Speaker 4 Yeah, I would say that the Polar Coaster questions submitted from the Friends of the Pod Discord are always incredibly smart and nerdy, as they were this time as well, which you and I would appreciate.

Speaker 4 Love them. But we made a specific call out for some more fun questions.
So we got into some more fun stuff, including

Speaker 4 which members of the Bravoverse would make the best presidential candidates. So I'll just tease you with that.

Speaker 3 Wow. All right.
I'm in. I'm in.
You got me. To catch this exclusive subscriber series, sign up at crooked.com/slash friends.

Speaker 3 Also, this week on Hysteria, Aaron and Alyssa bring together journalist Aaron Haynes, activist Julissa Arce, and comedian Megan Gailey to talk about the election.

Speaker 3 Hear their takes on everything from what it really takes for a woman to become president to why why people voted for abortion rights while supporting anti-abortion candidates and whether it's time to cut off your Trumpy friends.

Speaker 3 You can subscribe to Hysteria wherever you get your podcasts and you can catch full episodes on their YouTube channel. When we come back, Andy Kim.

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Speaker 1 Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by ONDAC or Celtic Bank. Ondac does not lend in North Dakota.
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Speaker 3 A BetterHelp ad.

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Speaker 3 Joining us today, a Democratic member of Congress who was just elected to be the brand new senator from the state of New Jersey. Andy Kim, welcome and congrats.

Speaker 7 Yeah, thanks, John, for having me on. I'm excited.

Speaker 3 So you just won in a state that swung 10 points to the right between 2020 and 2024.

Speaker 3 And one reason I wanted to talk to you is because a few days after the election, you posted what I thought was a really thoughtful thread about the conversations you had when you won your House seat back in 2020 with people who voted for you and voted for Donald Trump.

Speaker 3 Can you talk about why it was important to you to have those conversations and what you learned from them?

Speaker 7 Yeah, happy to talk about that. I mean, to set the stage, you know, I'm...

Speaker 7 I flipped a Republican district in 2018, a district that Trump won in 2016. And then in 2020, Trump was on the ballot and he won my congressional district.
But so did I.

Speaker 7 I outperformed Biden by eight points in 2020 to win. And I was one of only seven Democrats in the country to win a district that Trump won.

Speaker 7 And given that our House majority was only five votes that time, we saw that if me and four other Dems in these tough districts lost,

Speaker 7 we wouldn't have the Inflation Reduction Act, the infrastructure law. So I was really trying to just kind of hone in and understand.

Speaker 7 What is it? Why is it that 20 to 25,000 people in my congressional district voted for Trump and voted for me? And so I wanted to do that kind of research afterwards.

Speaker 7 I found that very few campaigns, if any, were doing that kind of operation. And so we just took it upon ourselves to do a series of conversations.
And it was really powerful.

Speaker 7 I mean, I think the overarching lesson that I learned then, that I still think is valid, is just that just understanding and feeling the visceral not just distrust, but frankly, disgust that so many people have in politics, in the status quo, in what's happening right now.

Speaker 7 You know, oftentimes, my, you know, in these districts, you know, they're called battleground, frontline districts, things like it.

Speaker 7 It makes it sound like there's like a blue army and a red army, like duking it out every single day. And whoever survives wins the election.

Speaker 7 But what I really saw was just like, honestly, like the vast, vast, vast majority of people in my congressional district honestly couldn't stand either party.

Speaker 7 And, you know, the biggest divide wasn't just red and blues, like between those who are engaged and those who are not, those who are just so distrusting or frankly apathetic to what is happening.

Speaker 7 So that was a really big eye-opener and one that gave me a sense of what needs to happen next.

Speaker 3 What do you think needs to happen next? And

Speaker 3 the question I always ask is, because I agree that I think that maybe the most salient divide in politics right now is between people who pay a lot of attention to politics and consume a lot of political news, junkies like me, whether you're a Democrat or Republican, And then the vast majority of people in this country who don't follow politics that closely, but still, you know, they probably still turn out to vote maybe just in a presidential and not a midterm.

Speaker 3 And I wonder if all, you know, we're having a lot of discussions now about like, what's next for the Democratic Party? Where did we go wrong? What can we fix?

Speaker 3 But sometimes I think to myself, there's just a whole bunch of people who aren't hearing any of this.

Speaker 3 And if we don't get them involved and engaged in politics, then, you know, we're not going to hold power again.

Speaker 7 Yeah, you know, it's just like so much of what I felt like the conversation was in the final couple weeks of this campaign. It was like this sense of who's got the energy on their side, right?

Speaker 7 And like, you know, getting the sense of the rallies and the Chicago convention or small dollar donors. And we realized that none of that really gave any sense of what actually was going to unfold.

Speaker 7 And I think there needs to be a clear understanding of what I call, you know, I try to practice what I call politics of humility. You know, it starts by saying we don't have the answers.

Speaker 7 Nobody right now.

Speaker 7 You know, I know a lot of people are pontificating right now, and that's fine, but we have to come at it from a sense of humility, just sense that like we don't know, nobody knows fully what went wrong.

Speaker 7 Then we need to take on the process of actually listening to people. And I think that was a really important step that I took on in 2020.
I strongly recommend it.

Speaker 7 But it was just one of those situations.

Speaker 7 Back in 2020, I told you there was only seven of us that won a district that Trump won.

Speaker 7 Really, at no point after that election did anyone from leadership or the White House or others come to the seven of us and say, you know, how'd you do it?

Speaker 7 You know, like, what do you need to do it again? How do we replicate or scale some of this? You know, and I think there was just too much of a sense of just like, you know, we know the answers.

Speaker 7 We need to move forward. So I really hope that there is a deep and meaningful process that unfolds that is coordinated, that is thoughtful and engaged.

Speaker 7 And try to listen. And And the way I sort of say it is like, if you're only having comfortable conversations in politics, it means you're not talking to all the people you need to be talking to.

Speaker 7 You know, politics should inherently be uncomfortable.

Speaker 7 You know, it should inherently be difficult.

Speaker 7 But, you know, it's so easy to make us want to just be able to be in the room with people that agree with us and throw these nice rallies and everyone's happy.

Speaker 7 But we need to find ourselves in a place that's more difficult. But you got to show up.

Speaker 7 You know, in my old congressional district that voted for Trump, you know, there was no Democratic operation on the ground outside of my campaign and the other efforts that are there.

Speaker 7 In New Jersey, so much of the resources for the party is in deep blue areas. You know, like if we want to go out there and engage people, you got to show up.

Speaker 7 You know, I've now done 80 town halls as a member of Congress. I've learned a lot from just meeting people where they're at.
and trying to operate.

Speaker 7 The second thing I'll just say, beyond just the showing up part, because it's important. But as I said earlier, there is a visceral, visceral distrust in the status quo.

Speaker 7 And I think it's going to be something that we have to unpack. When we run on a message about protecting democracy,

Speaker 7 protecting governance.

Speaker 7 We also have to show that that does not mean that we are protecting a broken status quo that has created the largest amount of inequality in American history, that has led for so many people to feel alienated, so many people to feel like the politics doesn't work for them.

Speaker 7 So how do we show like, yes, we should be protecting our democracy, we should be

Speaker 7 trying to prevent so much of this fragility to be decimated and broken by those who are putting themselves ahead of what's right for this country.

Speaker 7 But we cannot be seen as a party that is just thinking everything's fine otherwise.

Speaker 7 And I think that that sense of how do we show what we are trying to do different from the status quo, how we're trying to take it in a different direction, I think that'll be key to unlocking how we try to do this, not just from a talking point communication approach, but from an actual vision and a strategy for what comes next in our country.

Speaker 3 You mentioned the importance of having uncomfortable conversations. I know you've offered some advice on how to have effective uncomfortable conversations with people who may not agree with you.

Speaker 3 What are some of of the most important tips you'd like to offer people?

Speaker 7 Yeah, well, look, I mean, I think this is something that I'll just kind of sum up in this way: is like, so often in the political sphere, especially down in DC at the Capitol, you know, like there's this, there's this overarching question of like, what's the right message?

Speaker 7 Do we have the right message? And that is obviously a very important question.

Speaker 7 But there are two other important questions. One is, who is the right messenger? And then third, does the message you're actually trying to convey actually get to the people you're trying to talk to?

Speaker 7 And that is so often like the people in my congressional district or my state who are distrusting of politics, they're not like, they're not following like the DSEC or Hakeem Jefferies or Chuck Schumer on social media, you know, like how do you actually get to them?

Speaker 7 So, you know, first and foremost, you know, showing up is important. Having that sense of humility.
The way I sort of describe it is like when you are filled with hubris in politics, people can tell.

Speaker 7 They can tell when you're talking to them and you feel like you have all the right answers. Because if you feel like you have all the right answers, what's the point in talking to somebody?

Speaker 7 You're not actually going to learn something from them.

Speaker 7 So, what ends up happening is that conversation is more about trying to convert that person to your position rather than having a meaningful dialogue. And people can see through that.

Speaker 7 And honestly, they find it insulting.

Speaker 7 And so it's important that we understand how to be able to engage, how to be able to listen, have those types of opportunities on that front.

Speaker 7 Oftentimes, I try to do it in ways that are not overtly political, like try to, you know, do town halls, do other things where I can try to bring people in the fold.

Speaker 7 Because honestly, a lot of people that voted for Trump, they're not going to show up to something that's branded as a Democratic Party meeting or

Speaker 7 a listening session in that kind of vein.

Speaker 7 So we need to be thoughtful about how it is that we actually make sure we have the right people in the room that are willing to talk. Not everyone's going to be willing to talk.

Speaker 7 And not everyone is the right messenger, the right communicator. And I think that that's going to be important going forward.

Speaker 7 But look, I mean, there are a lot of people that, you know, some of my Senate class, you know, they outperformed the party. They've shown that they were able to bring on board other voters.

Speaker 7 You know, there, you know, there are things here that we can learn from. Now the question is, how do we scale it? And how do we try to replicate it?

Speaker 7 So, you know, it's going to be challenging, but that's where we start.

Speaker 3 So So now you're going to be a senator and boy, what a wonderful time to be in the U.S. Senate.

Speaker 3 I saw you came out in opposition to Matt Gates' nomination to be Attorney General.

Speaker 3 Just in terms of the conversation we were just having, what would you say to a constituent who doesn't know much about Matt Gates and can't quite understand why he's not fit to be Attorney General?

Speaker 7 Yeah, well, look, I think the first and foremost, what I try to do is lay out that this isn't about just one, you know, one person. This isn't just about

Speaker 7 all of these folks. I don't want to play whack-a-mole here.

Speaker 7 I want to lay out that,

Speaker 7 as someone who's worked in public service, I want to lay out that, look, we should be having people who understand that we're part of something bigger than all of us, that the oath that they swear is to a constitution, not to an individual, not to the president.

Speaker 7 And right now, like, I do think that people want to try to move forward in a way that isn't going to just be the same old, same old.

Speaker 7 And so, you know, I think what we, what I hope people see is, you know, this concern about the weaponization of

Speaker 7 these roles, these incredibly powerful positions that can be weaponized and just make things even worse, more divided as a country.

Speaker 7 And, you know, for me, I'm trying to think that through thoughtfully. You know, I'm, for the first time in my life, going to have a chance to vote on these nominations in the U.S.
Senate.

Speaker 7 I get to do a job that only 2,000 people in the history of America have ever done. So I do want to be thoughtful about it.
You know, I am trying to gather it up and not shoot from the hip.

Speaker 7 I want to be careful with how I make my case to the people of New Jersey and this country about how I feel about these different people that come before us. But

Speaker 7 I think first and foremost, though,

Speaker 7 anyone that is going to try to earn my vote and hopefully the vote of other senators, you know, they do need to come with that sense of public service, that sense that, you know, they will try to use this position as a means to try to move our country forward.

Speaker 7 And if they don't, I will stand up against them. I will vote against them.
I will do everything I can to be able to stop them from doing the damage that I think that they could do to our country.

Speaker 3 The Washington Post ran a story today with the headline. go bags, passports, foreign assets, preparing to be a target of Trump's revenge.

Speaker 3 And it's basically a story about a lot of former government officials, some are military, some law enforcement, Democrats, Republicans, even former Trump officials who've just spoken out against the president.

Speaker 3 And now they are actually thinking about leaving the country for some period of time because they're worried about political retribution. What's your reaction to that?

Speaker 7 Well, first of all, my reaction is: I mean, I haven't seen that article, but I've heard some of these types of stories. The first thing I guess I'll say is it's just really sad.

Speaker 7 You know, it's sad that we've gotten to this place, that the greatest, most powerful country in the world is being brought to its knees in terms of, you know, just how fragile our democracy is.

Speaker 7 You know, I'm a father of a seven-year-old and a nine-year-old. I'm

Speaker 7 two little boys. I'm like, I'm just really terrified.
I'm really sad by this question of what kind of America they're going to grow up in. You know, the fact that

Speaker 7 I know people, yeah, people who are saying they might have to go into hiding. They might have to leave the country, whether that's because,

Speaker 7 you know, of any number of different reasons. But, you know, that's sad.
You know, and look for me, I got my start as a civilian working in government.

Speaker 7 You know, I worked under the Bush administration when I was brand new, right out of college.

Speaker 7 I worked my way up from the photocopy room at the State Department, you know, and like I believe in a America where like public service is an honorable thing, you know, where it's something that that we should aspire to.

Speaker 7 You know, my parents were so proud to come to America and raise their family here. You know, they came here 50 years ago.

Speaker 7 And the idea now that so much of public service is being denigrated, so many people are worried that there's just this purge that's going to happen.

Speaker 7 They're going to dig through people and try to do a loyalty test and things like that. You know, it's sad that it's happening.

Speaker 7 And I would certainly do my best as someone who's worked in that kind of capacity to see what kind of protections we can have. But, you know, it's sad.

Speaker 7 And honestly, I saw some of this with people I worked with before in government. I saw some of this during the first term of the Trump administration.

Speaker 7 They were not as effective at doing it at that time, and I worry that they're going to come back this time around with much more velocity and much more

Speaker 7 strategy than they did the first time around. So that's even more worrisome, honestly.

Speaker 3 Trevor Burrus, Jr.: You mentioned you have a background in national security and foreign policy in both the

Speaker 3 Bush administrations and the Obama administration. Trump also announced Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence and Fox News host Pete Hegseth as Defense Secretary.

Speaker 3 Early thoughts on those picks and just beyond those picks, Trump's foreign policy in a second term, things you're watching for, things you're concerned about.

Speaker 7 Yeah, I mean, just overarching, again, I mean, this is something that it doesn't necessarily surprise me to see some of these names. I mean, we knew it would be loyalists.

Speaker 7 You know, we knew it would be people that,

Speaker 7 you know, that was one of the main things.

Speaker 7 I mean, Trump said it himself, like, you know, how he, you know, compared to the first term, he felt like, you know, he didn't didn't have people that would just do whatever he wanted them to do.

Speaker 7 And, you know, that's really

Speaker 7 so alarming. As I said, you know, this idea that we should be serving the Constitution, you know, not an individual.

Speaker 7 But that is something that we're not going to have if these people are confirmed. And it's not just that they're going to be loyal in just a potentially

Speaker 7 you know, blinded way, but you know, it's just like, I guess the way I was just sort of say it is like

Speaker 7 this is such a moment, not just domestically, but like we're entering this new era globally right now that is so dangerous, so worrisome. And, you know, I

Speaker 7 just the idea that like I really do believe that the next four to five years are going to shape the next four to five decades.

Speaker 7 And the idea that these are the people that are going to be at the helm, you know, having worked at the Pentagon before, to have somebody who just so blatantly says that women should not be in combat roles, you know, other things like that that are just, you know, so clearly out of touch with where I think our country should be moving towards.

Speaker 7 So

Speaker 7 it's,

Speaker 7 again, it's, it's, I don't want to say I'm like shocked or surprised because it's unfortunately this is what we knew would happen if he won a second term.

Speaker 7 And you know, now we just need to really think through, you know, what do we do to really show the American people why these are people that are,

Speaker 7 you know, that are going to be damaging to our country. And I hope to, as someone in national security that has that experience before, be able to show, you know, this is what we get.

Speaker 7 This is what happens when you politicize national security. You know, I used to try to believe in this line that

Speaker 7 the last place a partisan politics should belong is in the situation room.

Speaker 7 And I've worked in that situation room for a lot of different meetings of intensity. And I'm just trying to right now imagine that room.
I know exactly where the DNI sits.

Speaker 7 I know exactly where SECTF normally sits.

Speaker 7 And like, I'm, I, I just, I'm, I'm so worried because I know what kind of power that they have and trying to think about, you know, what is it that's going to be able to withstand some of this danger going forward.

Speaker 7 You know, I hope to play my role from the Senate side,

Speaker 7 but, you know, unfortunately, so much of what we learned a couple years ago is that what we thought were checks and balances of our democracy ended up just being norms, that if people ignored those norms and that normative behavior, you know, you didn't have the teeth that was necessary to change that.

Speaker 7 So, you know, that's something I'm hoping we can really confront.

Speaker 3 What are some of your priorities and hopes for this term in Congress, your first term here as a senator? I mean, obviously it's very difficult. There's a Republican trifecto, Trump in the White House.

Speaker 3 Republicans control the Senate and the House.

Speaker 3 And, you know, I can tell from talking to you and what you've said, like

Speaker 3 you didn't, you didn't run so you can just be someone who opposes everything and says no. But at the same time, I'm sure you have things that you really want to get done.

Speaker 3 How are you thinking about what you can get done, what your priorities are, what you want to fight for in these next couple of years?

Speaker 7 Well, I'll be honest. I think my priorities in terms of a lot of issues are frankly the same as they would have been,

Speaker 7 you know, regardless of the outcome of November 5th. You know, we have to address the high costs, the challenges that people are facing.
You know, like I can't express enough just how

Speaker 7 much anxiety people have. Like when I talk to people,

Speaker 7 they speak as if it's like this heaviness that's like sitting upon their chest. Like you can tell just how worried people are.
And it's not just about the high costs.

Speaker 7 It's one thing if you have a high cost, but you have a path forward that you feel confident is going to address that economic challenge.

Speaker 7 But right now, the deep unpredictability that is out there in the world right now is what is really adding to it.

Speaker 7 People don't know what's going to happen six months from now, next year, let alone next week. And, you know, just like, how can we live with this much anxiety and unpredictability in our lives?

Speaker 7 So, you know, that's something that at a fundamental level I'm trying to tackle. So, yes, we want to make sure that we're taking meaningful steps on trying to address high costs.

Speaker 7 I am trying to think through, like, look, I'm a young dad.

Speaker 7 I think it's important to have the voices of young parents in the U.S. Senate and Congress and government.

Speaker 7 So, you know, talking about the mental health crisis right now in this country, especially when it comes to youth, you know, I do think that there's space there to be able to have a major bipartisan push on addressing mental health.

Speaker 7 You know, I'm hopeful that there, you know, right now the innovation

Speaker 7 curve is so important. Like we're entering this era of such velocity and acceleration when it comes to innovation.
We were able to pass pass the Chips and Science Act in a bipartisan way.

Speaker 7 Is there a 2.0 that we can work on to address this question about American global competitiveness?

Speaker 7 Is there someone there that will work with me to address how to shore up and secure our supply chain, which was one of the biggest reasons that we experienced high prices and global shocks was because we did not insulate and protect our economy to be resilient to these global shocks to supply chains.

Speaker 7 So, yes, like I hope that we can engage in that kind of approach.

Speaker 7 But, you know, we'll see. We'll see.
And I'm going to try to

Speaker 7 engage and show people that, like, look, there's a path of less resistance if you choose some of these types of issues that I think we can try to find some meaningful engagement on.

Speaker 7 But I'm not going to be naive. You know, I worked in Congress for two years under the previous Trump administration.
I understand the challenges that are there.

Speaker 7 And, you know, and know, we just need to figure out, you know, how best to try to navigate that.

Speaker 3 Last question. In 2021, in the wake of January 6th, a photo of you cleaning up the Capitol Rotunda went viral.

Speaker 3 Have you had a chance to reflect on that now that Donald Trump is heading back to the White House and seemingly there will be

Speaker 3 no accountability for him in his role in January 6th and

Speaker 3 his attempt to overturn the election and potentially pardons for the riders.

Speaker 7 Yeah, I mean, I reflect on it a lot.

Speaker 7 Not a day that goes by that I'm at the Capitol where I don't stop in the rotunda for at least a couple of minutes. I try to just sit there.

Speaker 7 I mean, I think it's such, I think it's the most beautiful room in America.

Speaker 7 And I just, I love seeing the expressions of tourists as they come through and they crane their necks to be able to look up.

Speaker 7 You know, and that is something that you know, tries to continue to remind me why I do this work.

Speaker 7 But in terms of what comes next and how I try to use those reflections, what January 6th taught me and what that experience, especially about that photograph of me cleaning the floor of the Capitol, taught me, is there was a moment there where I was cleaning the Capitol and, you know, I went to a side hallway, was cleaning up there, and I saw this plaque on the wall.

Speaker 7 And I looked at the plaque and it said, you know, below this lays a cornerstone laid by First President president George Washington. And it was just like a very powerful moment.

Speaker 7 You know, I'm standing there, you know, my pants covered in soot and dirt and carrying a bag of broken glass and broken flags and debris.

Speaker 7 And I'm seeing that, yes, like George Washington laid the cornerstone of this building. And the way I sort of said it to me myself that day is that I've realized that my job is to be a caretaker.

Speaker 7 you know, to be a caretaker for this democracy. And I believe that the Capitol building is a physical manifestation of the Constitution.

Speaker 7 So on that day, it was also meant to take care of the Capitol. But I think that that sense of caretaker helps me try to understand what comes next, to try to understand

Speaker 7 the challenges that we're going to face. But the role that I'm going to play, I've been saying this line a lot lately where I say I believe that the opposite of democracy is apathy.

Speaker 7 And I really believe that so deeply right now, it's so easy to look at the next four years and feel like,

Speaker 7 wow, like how did we find ourselves back here after everything that we've tried to do, all the mobilization that we've done. So I can understand how a lot of people are feeling that.

Speaker 7 I'm sure right now, a lot of your listeners are feeling that right now.

Speaker 7 But I hope that they recognize that this isn't going to fix itself. It's absolutely worth fighting for.
And the worst thing we can do is to disengage. take our foot off the gas in that kind of vein.

Speaker 7 So yes,

Speaker 7 I had somebody ask me this this the day after election day. She said, I'm so happy for you, but I'm sure this isn't what you signed up for.

Speaker 7 And I looked at her, I said, Actually, it's exactly what I signed up for. Like, I'm not doing this job because I thought it was easy.

Speaker 7 You know, this is something that's taking me away from my seven-year-old and a nine-year-old for so much of the year. Like, I'm missing so much of their life.

Speaker 7 I would not miss their life for anything other than something that is of the utmost importance.

Speaker 7 If I didn't believe that me doing this job is my best way of trying to be a good dad to my kids, then I would not be doing this. So like for us, like always remember why we fight, why we do this.

Speaker 7 I call it our North Star. Like remember our North Star, what brought us into this.
It isn't about tribal battles and which party has more power. It's about the change that we're trying to see.

Speaker 7 And I feel like I learned those lessons on January 6th and the days after of what my role is.

Speaker 7 And I've now decided to dedicate the rest of my life to trying to address one singular question, which is how do we heal this country? Not if we can heal it, but how do we heal?

Speaker 7 I still believe it's possible. So that's what I learned on January 6th.
And that's certainly pointing me in the direction of what I'm going to do now for the rest of my life.

Speaker 3 Well, Senator-elect, Andy Kim, this was the most hopeful conversation I've had since the election. And yours was a rare bright spot in this election.

Speaker 3 And I'm really, really glad that you're going to be in the U.S. Senate.
So thank you for joining the pod. And please come back again soon.

Speaker 7 Great. Thanks so much, John.
Take care.

Speaker 3 That's our show for today. Love it, Tommy, and I will be back with a new show on Tuesday.
Have a great weekend, everyone.

Speaker 4 Bye, everyone.

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Speaker 12 The 2024 election and unfortunately the post-election period is going to be chocked full of drama and nail-biting suspense.

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