The Veteran Candidate

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This is Radio Atlantic.

I'm Isaac Dover.

On this week's show, I sat down with Seth Moulton, a Democratic congressman from Massachusetts.

Moulton is probably best known for his opposition to Nancy Pelosi.

He's argued that the party has too much power at the top and worked to unseat her over the last few years, though it obviously didn't work.

Now he's one of the many Democrats running for president, but he's not one of the 20 who made the cut for the debates next week.

His focus as a candidate is on national security.

Before he first won his House seat in 2014, Moulton was a Marine who served four tours in Iraq and was awarded the Bronze Star.

That experience has informed a lot of his criticism of President Trump and why he thinks impeachment is long overdue.

We got into that and more in our conversation.

Take a listen.

Congressman Seth Moulton, thanks for being here on Radio Atlantic.

Isaac, thanks for having me.

So I think the first question is, we're a couple days out from from the debates in Detroit.

There are going to be 20 candidates on stage, two nights.

People already are saying, this field is too big.

Can't some people start to drop out?

And you're saying, no, I got another candidate for you who's not on the debate stage.

Why

should people be looking to you over the 20 candidates that are already there?

Because my background and experience are different, and what I'm running on in this race is a bit different.

And I think most importantly,

my message is resonating on the ground.

And it's people in these early primary states that are saying, Seth, we want your voice to be a part of this race.

We want it to be a part of the debate.

We think that the only combat veteran in a race

during the longest war in American history should have a voice on the Democratic debate stage.

They think that we should have a policy on national security, a forward-looking,

strong policy to make America safe in the future, should be part of this debate, that we can't take on Trump if we're not willing to challenge him as commander-in-chief.

Aaron Powell, but if they're saying that, then

why is that not registering the polls yet?

Because it should be said, the debates are

who gets on stage is determined by your standing in the polls and where you have to get 1% and three polls to get on there, or the number of online donors you've got and 65,000 for these debates.

And you haven't hit either of those thresholds.

Well, actually, we've hit the threshold in 12 different polls, but the DNC has chosen not to count those polls.

So, I mean, you know, I think at the end end of the day, that who the Washington Democratic National Committee establishment chooses to be on these debate stages in the middle of the summer is not ultimately going to determine who the winners are when voters go to the polls starting in February of next year.

And

I think that's what I hear from, you know, that's what I hear from people on the ground, and that's why I'm sticking to it.

Is it when the debates happened in Miami a couple weeks ago, the first debates, did you watch them?

You were in Miami.

I did.

I did.

What's that experience like where you're watching 20 other people, including some of your colleagues in the House and some of your former colleagues in the House, people you know?

Well, sure, it's frustrating not to be up there, especially when you have so many supporters saying, Seth, why aren't you there?

You know, you would be a different voice in this debate.

You'd be someone who's not just tacking hard to the left at a time when I think it's going to be tough to beat.

Donald Trump.

I think he's actually upped his chances of reelection in the last few months.

Why is that?

Well, I mean, you've seen the polls.

I mean, he's doing better.

Why do you think that is, though?

Why I think it is.

Because the reaction among a lot of Democrats is like, oh, well, he says, go home to the four members of the squad, and that must work against him.

And some of the polls show that, in fact, people disapprove of that.

But yet, you're right, his approval rating is in better shape now than it was a couple months ago.

What's going on?

You know, what he did with the...

the so-called squad is morally reprehensible, but in some ways politically brilliant.

Because if you remember the quick history here,

Speaker Pelosi kind of singled them out and

said that they don't represent the party.

And then when they were singled out, when they were sort of separated a little bit from the party, Trump came in and pounced.

He said disgusting,

outright racist things about them, using racist tropes that have been with us for

hundreds of years as well.

It's a definition of things.

Literally the textbook, literally written in textbooks as an example of racism.

And

what happened next is that Pelosi and in many ways the rest of the party

had to run to be with them, to side with them, and therefore get identified with their

particular brand of politics that doesn't represent all.

It's an important voice in the party, but doesn't represent the entire party.

And that's exactly what Trump wants.

Are you a subscriber to the theory that he did that on purpose to make the party hug

those four congresswomen?

I am.

Now, I don't know if Trump himself is that brilliant to come up with this strategy, but he obviously has people on his team who are pretty politically brilliant.

And I think he did do that on purpose, and I think that's why he doubled down on him.

So let me go back to what it's like watching those debates.

Are you like shouting at the TV?

Is that how that goes?

I'm not a shouter.

I'm not really shouting at him.

Are you taking notes like, oh, that's what I would have said?

Well, I mean, I talked about what I would have said.

My team was actually, they took over my Twitter handle and were tweeting about how my policies differ from what we were hearing on the debate stage.

But that's different from you watching it yourself.

Yeah, no, but I'm just saying that that's how we handled it, right?

I mean, that's how we responded to it and

reacted and responded to the different ways that people were answering questions, some of which are incredibly important.

Of course, there are also a lot of important questions left out of that debate.

I mean, we really didn't talk about barely at all about

national security, a little bit about the the war in Afghanistan.

We didn't address election security.

We didn't talk at all about mental health, which has been a centerpiece of my campaign.

I have the most ambitious mental health proposal, I think, of any presidential candidate in history.

And I can't tell you how many Americans have come up to me on the campaign trail,

reaching out through the internet and said how important that message is and how much it's affected them and their lives.

People who.

And you're talking about your own

personality.

Right.

So, my decision to share how I've dealt with post-traumatic stress coming back from four tours in Iraq and how I sought help and really was able to surmount that challenge.

And

that example of someone

in a position of leadership talking about dealing with mental health has actually inspired a lot of other people to share their stories.

I mean, I didn't know that would happen, but it's been amazing.

I had an idea that that would happen.

I mean, you

made the disclosure and part of your campaign, right?

To be perfectly honest, I thought it might sink my campaign, campaign, which is candidly why I never did it in politics before.

So

what prompted it in that moment, though?

Because you didn't talk about it when you were running for your House seat, but then you did talk about it as your presidential campaign was coming off the ground.

Because I decided that if I'm running for the top leadership position in the country, I ought to lead by example on an issue I care a lot about.

And I've been a consistent advocate for mental health in Congress, especially among veterans, but I never told my story.

And people told me, Seth, this is a huge political risk.

I mean, there have been people, famously Eagleton in the early 70s, whose campaigns, whose ⁇ he was, I guess, running for vice president at the time or the vice presidential nominee, was totally sunk by the disclosure of mental health issues.

Of course, we also know that some of our greatest presidents like Abraham Lincoln, Elysius Grant, I mean, have had, I mean, they were seriously depressed.

Although we know that after the fact.

But we knew that after the fact, right.

Well, people knew it at the time, but it certainly wasn't a public issue in the case.

Yeah.

I mean,

whatever.

There was no diagnosis for depression when Abraham Lincoln was sitting in the White House.

Right.

But I think that that.

So the bottom line is I thought it was the right thing to do.

And

there are a lot of things I do in politics because maybe they're not politically opportune or I don't know how they're going to turn out politically, but I just think it's the right thing to do.

And sometimes that...

that wins out.

And when I've heard Vietnam veterans come up to me and share stories that they've never shared since coming back from the war 50 years ago, but they're sharing because I shared mine.

Or when

someone comes up and says, I've been depressed for the last three years, but because of what I heard you say, I've finally decided to go see a therapist.

I mean, that happened to me just last week, that particular story.

I know I'm making a difference.

And I know that these people want these issues raised in this campaign, in this debate.

They

want them to be a part of the agenda for.

I mean, we have a bunch of the candidates talk about the endless wars and the right that what's the stat is that this fall

someone will be eligible to enlist in the military who was not yet born when we invaded Afghanistan, I think is the way that it goes.

I mean, technically, that's already happened because you can get away right at a couple of 17-year-olds in my platoon.

So,

which is amazing.

I mean, it's just unbelievable what these

right.

So, you will have people serving in Afghanistan who were not alive on September 11th.

Yeah.

I mean, what does that say about the leadership in our country?

What does it say about the people in elected office who refused to even have a debate in Congress about this war?

That's wrong.

I mean, that's why I ran in the first place back in 2014.

I didn't wasn't even interested in politics growing up.

I didn't come back from the war expecting to run for office.

But after I was home for a little while and realized that, you know, these bad decisions, the same sort of bad decision-making that got us into Iraq, it's just going to keep happening if more people don't stand up who have the perspective of being on the ground in combat.

Let's talk about a bad decision you think is being made right now by someone that you have battled with in the past.

This is Nancy Pelosi speaking after Bob Mueller testified in those two hearings.

She said, what we saw today was a very strong manifestation, in fact, some would say even an indictment, of this administration's code of silence and their cover-up.

This is about the oath we take to protect and defend the Constitution, but some of the actions that the administration may have taken may have jeopardized our national security by strengthening Russia's hand and interfering in our elections, undermining democracy, not only in our country, but in other countries as well, upsetting our preeminence as a democracy in the world.

This is very serious.

Today was very important.

That was a comment made as she was in a fight with Jerry Nadler, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, who was pushing for impeachment to move forward, and she was saying no.

So how do you square that?

Well, I'm not sure because that seems like a pretty good case for having impeachment proceedings, what she just said.

Although I would say that it's not

may have impacted our national security, did impact our national security.

There's no question that what the president has done and failed to do as commander-in-chief, not only agreeing to accept Russia's help, but saying that he'll accept it in the future,

not only allowing these things to happen on his campaign, but doing nothing to to prevent them from happening to our elections

in the years ahead.

That's dereliction of duty by the commander-in-chief.

And we're just talking about the national security issues.

We haven't even gotten to obstruction of justice.

I think it's very clear from Robert Mueller, from his report, from his testimony, from his press conference, that he's teeing it up on a platter for Congress to deal with.

He's said very clearly: here's all the evidence that the president committed obstruction of justice, but I can't charge him.

Therefore, Congress, your constitutional duty, as is written clearly in the Constitution, is to hold impeachment proceedings.

That's how we deal with the president who broke the law.

Is Nancy Pelosi

committing a dereliction of duty herself then?

Well, I think in the light of history, the Democratic Party's failure to take action on this will be viewed very poorly.

I mean, when my nine-month-old daughter is reading about this in her college history books 20 years from now, I don't think we'll look strong or right in the light of history that we just failed to uphold our constitutional duty to enforce the law.

I mean, laws are meaningless unless they're enforced.

And the ball is in our court.

The ball is in our court because we took it into our court when we won the midterm, specifically on the agenda of holding this administration accountable.

Didn't you win it on healthcare?

Look, healthcare is important.

Of course, that's a

story.

But no, I think more

than that's what candidates were running on in a lot of places, right?

People, of course, ran on healthcare and a variety of of other issues, on a lot of different issues.

But most fundamentally, we took back the House of Representatives into Democratic control because we said this is the best way that we can hold this administration accountable.

And I was a huge part of that, campaigning for veterans running across the country in some of the key swing districts that we needed to win.

I heard this argument on the ground.

I made this argument on the ground.

It resonated with voters.

They wanted some balance restored to our government.

We got it, and now we're doing nothing with it.

Aaron Powell, Jr.: But so, if you think that in 20 years

the history books are not going to

treat the Democrats well for not impeaching Donald Trump, then won't they,

to just carry out the thought here, not treat Nancy Pelosi well and say that she didn't do what the Democrats and what the Democratic leadership should have done?

Well, I mean, I'm not sure.

She's the Speaker of the House.

Look,

she's also done an awful lot of things in her career, and she's done some of them very well.

But I do think this is a grave mistake.

I think it's a big error, and

it's part of why I've been calling for a new generation of leadership to take on these tough challenges and

not to play politics.

I mean, I understand that she said in that statement that this isn't about politics, but fundamentally, that's been the argument that she and other leaders in our party have been making for a long time, that

the politics of impeachment are tough, you know, that might imperil our chances in the 2020 election.

The polls are against us right now because only 45% of Americans think that Donald Trump should be impeached at this moment, which, by the way, is actually very high.

When impeachment proceedings started against Nixon, it was only 30%.

Right, and that was part of the argument that Nadler apparently made to her was when Nixon was first being impeached, the proceedings started,

the support was very low.

But over the course of the proceedings happening, it was a long process.

It was a long process, which is a longer process than it would seem like there's time for the Democrats to do now in the House, which is another reason I've called for this for a year and a half.

But I think it's

better late than never.

You're right.

Support skyrocketed.

But the real point is not about

where the polls are today or where they might go.

It's not about the politics.

It's about just doing the right thing.

I didn't swear an oath to protect and defend the politics of my party.

I swore an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

The exact same oath I swore word for word as the United States Marines.

But you think

the political argument that she and others are making is out of touch with where Americans are?

My point is that what's most important here is that it's out of touch with the Constitution.

And that's what

her argument would be there's not support in the country for this.

That there is support among the people who are rabbit on Twitter and among the party base for impeachment, but it's not where people really want to be and that part of the job of Congress is to represent the will of the people.

You know,

in my office on Capitol Hill, I only have two letters framed, and we literally get about 1,500 a week.

But I only have two framed, and one of them says something very simple.

It just says,

statesmen don't follow polls.

Polls follow statesmen.

And I believe that.

I believe the point is not what do the polls say, but what is the right thing to do.

And if you really show the leadership that Americans expect of members of Congress, of our party right now and holding this administration accountable, then the polls will come with us, which is, of course, exactly what happened when Democrats began impeachment proceedings against Nixon.

Who sent that letter to you?

An old friend from back home.

A constituent?

Yes, a constituent.

Someone that I proudly represent.

And I can't remember when she sent it, but it was

when I was in some

political fight when I took an unpopular position, which basically means it could have been just about any month in my time in Congress.

And I'm not afraid to take unpopular positions when I think it's the right thing to do.

And there have been many times when, you know,

things have come around to my side.

Like when I challenged the governor of Massachusetts on allowing Syrian refugees to come into Massachusetts.

And

people assumed, oh, well, Seth, you're probably taking the side of all those Democrats in Massachusetts.

And we know it's a Democratic state, but we have a Republican governor.

Actually, the Boston Globe did a poll and found that Massachusetts residents were with the governor.

They were against me.

But they also did a poll a few weeks later and myself and others who were advocating for doing the right thing

by our morals, by our values, and also by our national security,

found that we had changed those polls.

So

you talk about all the things that need to happen with the Democratic Party changing.

This has been a theme of your time in Congress, right?

You pushed for Nancy Pelosi to not be the minority leader after the 2016 elections.

Well, to be fair, it wasn't just

the leadership, the triumvirate that's been there for a combined total of about 100 years.

Yes, and their combined ages are 240-something years, right?

I didn't say that, but you did.

It's true.

It's just that's math.

You were not the only person

who was pushing against Pelosi being the minority leader in 2016.

You were not the only person who was pushing against her being the speaker after the

2018 elections.

There is, though, this rise of the new generation of Democratic leaders in the House,

and it's not at the moment the Democratic leadership of the sort that you would want, right?

When you see the preeminence of

the squad and the kind of fight for what the party would be, you're saying we need leadership that's different from Pelosi, but also different from

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilan Omar and Rashida Talib and Ayana Presley, who's, of course, a colleague of yours in the Massachusetts delegation.

Right.

And a friend.

And I mean,

you know,

I've really gotten to know her very well.

And actually, I think she has an incredibly important voice in our party.

And I want her voice to be a part of leadership.

My point is that we can have different diverse voices, but that's what we need.

And we've had the same voices for a long time.

And when the country is calling for a new generation of leadership in a way that they literally send the most diverse young class to Congress that we've ever seen, I think that those voices should be heard.

Right.

When you in your early 40s and not long into the house or an old man around.

I know, right?

Right.

Everyone thought I was so young when I showed up.

And then now there are people 10 years younger.

What's going wrong, you think, in the Democratic Party in that the tilt is in the direction that you don't want it to be, then the further to the left that you think is dangerous politically in a fight against Trump, but also not where your own politics are.

as this new generation does step up.

Well, here's the thing.

I mean, first of all, all the people who actually won the seats we needed to flip to take back the House, 100% of them were not on the far left.

100% of them were more independent voices in the middle, people who appealed to independent voters, even disaffected Republicans in these tough districts that we needed to win.

So when you go through that group of next generation leaders, people like Mikey Sherrill from New Jersey, Alyssa Slotkin from Michigan,

you know, down the list, Jason Crowe, Jared Golden.

I mean, these are all people, all the folks I just mentioned are veterans who won these really tough seats we needed to take back.

They actually gave us the majority.

They represent a different part of the party.

But more importantly, if we're going to be the majority party, we've got to have the majority of viewpoints.

So I don't want Ayana Presley's view to be squashed.

Not at all.

I want her to have a voice.

I just want to make sure that people are realizing that.

But you also don't want it to be the prime voice.

I just want to make sure people realize.

realize that that's not the only voice that defines our party.

And what Trump and the Republicans are doing right now is trying to make it clear to America that those are the voices that do identify our party.

I mean, so many people, just

Republicans in the House now, they'll always say, you know, the Democrats and the socialists.

Like, I didn't hear that four or five years ago.

No one asked me when I first ran whether I was a Democrat or a socialist.

And yet I get that question today because they've been effective at identifying us with that wing of the party.

Do you get that question back in your district?

No, I don't get it.

Seriously, I get it from people in the press, right?

But they just want my reaction.

I mean, that's why they're asking.

Everyone knows I'm a Democrat.

It's not like people ask that expecting a different answer.

But the point is that they're trying to highlight

what's really become a divide in our party.

And it shouldn't be a divide.

I mean, it should be a place where people realize, look, this is the majority party.

They're going to have a lot of different views.

And we just need to make sure all of those views are heard.

But we also need to make sure that when we select a nominee to take on Donald Trump, it's a nominee who can build the diverse coalition that we need to win.

And that means everybody in our party.

We need everybody to show up, all the different wings of the Democratic Party.

But we also need to reach those independent voters, those Obama Trump voters, and even some disaffected Republicans.

It's not an easy thing to take out an incumbent president.

We've seen that throughout history.

And if we can't build that coalition with a nominee, if we have a nominee that alienates some part of that coalition, I just don't think we're going to win.

But they would say, well, you need to be strong and believe in things and that you're mushy in the middle.

You're saying I'm not strong.

I mean, I'm just saying that that would,

that's the argument.

They can make that political argument, but it's, but it's political crap.

I mean, come on.

I mean, you know,

I didn't risk my life for my country because I'm not strong.

We just disagree on some things.

You know,

for example, I was one of the first people to sign on to the Green New Deal because I believe climate change is an existential issue.

And as one of the only members of Congress who has a degree in science, I think we need to act aggressively right away to deal with it.

But then when

people added these things like a jobs guarantee and Medicare for all to the Green New Deal, I said, whoa, I don't think those things should be a part of it.

In fact, I think they detract from it because they give other people reason to vote against it when the issue of the day, the issue we should be focused on, is climate change itself.

So that's a great example of a place where we disagree on some of the execution here.

I agree with

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez that climate change is an existential issue.

I do not agree with the way that she addresses it through her vision of what the Green New Deal should be.

Aaron Powell, Jr.: The argument that centrism, more moderation, is not the lack of having an opinion, it's that you just have a different opinion of it, right?

Like that, that's what it really comes from.

And I think it's also

important

to

not try to diminish the views of those

who are in the center or the you know, you won't hear me trying to diminish the views of the squad or the people on the left.

I think, as I've said many many times, just in this interview, I think they have an important voice and they represent

an important part of our party.

But the idea that they define the Democratic Party, the idea that the Democratic Twitter sphere defines a Democratic Party is just wrong.

I was at a black church in South Carolina a few weeks ago, and a lot of people wanted to say somebody running for president gets to say.

Well, it was an honor to be there because it was the home church of my state director.

And she took me there with her family and introduced me to a lot of folks who were very excited to meet me and love the fact that I'm a veteran.

And many of them wanted pictures with me,

which I was flattered by.

And I said to some of them, you know, if you don't mind, put these on Facebook because that's helpful to get the word out there.

And several of them looked at me and said,

but we don't have Facebook.

Some of them don't even have the internet.

They're not voices that are tweeting all day long, and yet they're incredibly important voices in our country and in our party, and they're just not being heard.

Let's take a short break, and we'll be back with more with Congressman Seth Moulton.

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So, the through line of a lot of what you do is bashing the Democratic establishment, saying that it is out of touch with where things are.

You pushed against Nancy Pelosi.

You started out your career in Congress running against an incumbent in a primary.

Now you're pushing against where the party leadership has landed on impeachment.

You're also trying to get yourself into the conversation in the Democratic presidential primary, including saying that the DNC is

part of this old out-of-touch Washington.

Well, I don't think bashing is the right verb.

I've always challenged, and I challenge based on principle where I disagree, and where, frankly, a lot of Democrats and Americans across the country disagree, but they don't feel like they have voices who will speak up for that view in Congress, you know, or in their elected officials.

And I can't tell you how many times when I've

challenged the establishment, the people across the country have said, thank you, thank you for being willing to go up against the Washington establishment.

You know, it's amazing.

I guess I've only been doing this for about five years, but I still have yet to meet a voter who said, Seth, I just wish you'd be a little bit more establishment.

You know, I wish you would just do what all those people in Washington tell you to do.

That's not what Americans want.

And my job is to represent the American people.

Does Tom Perez not get it also?

Is it just that there's thinking that is calcified in D.C.?

Look, I don't know what's going on with the DNC, but I think that when you have a process that's excluded the only combat veteran from the longest war in American history on the debate stage that in the first debate excluded the only governor from a state that Trump won.

I don't know that that's the best process to pick the best nominee to take on Donald Trump.

And that's ultimately what the DNC should be doing is finding the best person to represent our party and to make sure we actually beat Donald Trump.

And so that's how you position yourself now talking about things going forward as like really playing up the anti-establishment.

But I wouldn't be in this race if I didn't believe I was the best nominee because I don't think that's my patriotic duty.

I think we have to beat Donald Trump.

And I'm a patriot.

I'm someone who kept going back to the Iraq war, even though I was an outspoken critic of that war, because I didn't want anyone to go in my place.

And if I thought there was a better person in this race to take on Trump, to make sure that we won, then I would just get out and support that person.

But I think...

Actually, the best foil for Donald Trump is a young combat veteran, someone who can go up on that debate stage and ask him about his bone spurs and appeal to the Americans Americans who are disturbed by the fact that this totally unpatriotic draft Dodger is the person who is hugging the American flag and trying to represent the troops.

And at the same time, as he's failing in his basic duty as commander-in-chief to keep our country safe.

Trevor Burrus: Well, let's talk about that for a second.

National security is not something that I hear

often on the campaign trail, and I'm out quite a bit talking with other Democratic candidates.

It's something that you've been talking about from the outset of getting into this race.

When we look at what's going on in the world, though, it seems like there are a bunch of big issues.

This is the Russian attack on the elections and Mueller telling us that other attacks are underway.

There's what's going on with Iran, North Korea, just to name a few easy situations.

How concerned are you that Donald Trump is the commander-in-chief through this?

Extremely.

There's nothing that fundamentally concerns me more.

The most frightening day I have had as a member of Congress was the afternoon that a small group of us from the Armed Services Committee went up in the doomsday plane to fly around Washington and understand how decisions are made to launch nuclear weapons.

And the Air Force is very proud of the fact that the system can't be hacked.

So at one point, after running through an exercise that I thought would be about like the Soviet Union, you know, shooting 100 missiles our way as if it was still 1955,

Instead, it was an exercise that was so frighteningly realistic, I thought, this could happen tomorrow.

And an Air Force colonel said to me, you know, the thing is, sir, that you can't hack this system.

The system is basically foolproof.

And I thought to myself, yeah, unless the guy at the top is a fool.

I mean, that's literally how high the stakes are in this election.

And the stakes are also high because we could be sending young Americans into battle in Iran, a war that would be far more disastrous than the war with Iraq.

Yeah, so the night that the president apparently ordered a strike on Iran and then pulled it back 10 minutes later, given the experiences that you've had, not only in Iraq yourself, but in the doomsday plan,

what goes through your head when you find out that that happens?

This guy has no idea what he's doing.

He has no sense of the responsibility that he holds as commander-in-chief.

And he is putting lives, American lives, at risk by being so erratic, by having an administration that can't even agree on what our Iran strategy is.

And even when they do, it's a strategy that's more interested in getting us into war than finding peace.

Do you think he's going to to get people killed?

Has he already gotten people killed?

I think

his erratic strategy in Syria,

his lack of control over what's going on with our troops in Africa,

his reckless threats to North Korea, I mean, these are all things that if they haven't gotten Americans killed yet, they will.

And in some cases, like in Syria, I think they have.

You could be talking about these issues without running for president, without

going through all the things that are involved with running for president, not seeing your family,

not spending as much time fundraising.

Is it necessary to run for president and get the attention to these issues that you feel like they need?

I don't think it's necessary, but it helps.

But again, I'm running for president because I think I'm the best person to take on Donald Trump because I'm the only person in this race who has...

built that coalition I talk about building that we need to win this race in some of the most difficult environments on earth.

Like literally, you you know, as a platoon commander in the infantry, leading troops on the ground in combat, I had to bring together Americans from all over this country with different backgrounds, different religious beliefs, different political beliefs, and get them united behind a common mission to serve America.

I think that's the leadership that we need to win.

And I think it's the kind of leadership that we need for the next president to accomplish all the great things that Democrats want to do for this country.

Because we're not going to get health care reform if we can't find more unity in this country.

We're not going to tackle climate change if we can't get more Americans united behind that mission.

When you were about to get into the race, I asked you, are you really not going to run for re-election to your House seat?

You sort of left that open then.

Let's end with this.

How committed are you to this presidential campaign?

Are you not running for your House seat?

Are you in it?

I'm 100% committed to

this presidential campaign, but that doesn't take away the fact that I'm so proud to serve the people of Massachusetts that if this presidential race doesn't work out, I will proudly run for re-election.

The primary is not until next September.

And I think that my whole goal here is always to just do whatever I can to serve this country best.

I think right now it's running for president, but if I'm not selected as a nominee, I think the best way I can serve is by representing, by continuing to represent the people of Massachusetts.

So that's what I'll do.

All right, Congressman Seth Moulton, we know you have to get to votes in the House, so we let you

call.

Thanks for being here on Radio Atlantic.

Thank you.

That'll do it for this week of Radio Atlantic.

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