“Can We Please Get Our Sh*t Together?” Sen. Elissa Slotkin on the Democratic Party

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Welcome to Raging Moderates.

I'm Jessica Tarlove, and my guest today is Michigan Senator Alyssa Slotkin, a former CIA analyst and Pentagon official who's become one of the most prominent voices for moderation in Congress.

Senator, thank you so much for being here.

Thanks for having me.

It's a pleasure.

Well, I expect it to be a pleasure.

It's already a pleasure because I like your outfit.

I want to talk to you right off the bat about the shutdown.

We are almost a full month into it.

It feels like there's no end in sight.

But last night, there was a letter out of the New Jersey Republican Congressional Caucus led by reps Jeff Andrew and Tom Keene.

They sent a letter to Mike Johnson urging a vote on a short-term funding bill, warning that the loss of healthcare premiums is hurting their constituents.

Do you see this as a sign that the stalemate could finally break?

You know, I don't know.

The House is just genuinely not here for like a month.

I mean, they have not been working, period.

So

I don't know if that's just for show, you know, just to say we're working on this.

I do think that there are a number of Republicans who understand that the bill that they just voted for has created and precipitated a health care crisis.

And now everyone's getting notified.

And now that everyone's getting those notifications of an increase to their premiums, you know, they're complaining because no one in America thought they were paying too little for healthcare to begin with.

And so the smarter Republicans understand that healthcare is one of the most sensitive things in the world.

So if that's a way forward, that would be great.

I actually think we could get in a room and solve this in about 72 hours, like or less.

I think it's just a matter of negotiating.

But up here, the House and the Senate leadership, like they don't have agency to negotiate.

Donald Trump has to approve.

So it's, you know, I think Democrats need to have that conversation at least directly or indirectly with Donald Trump, and we could solve this pretty quickly.

Do you think there will be another Oval Office meeting with Schumer and Jeffries and Trump?

I hope so.

I mean, there should.

We're trying to, I think, make sure that happens before he goes off to Asia so that we can start to get moving here.

But you know, it has to be a two-sided conversation.

I can't negotiate with myself and I can't negotiate in the press.

So, you know, look, we almost had a government shutdown in Michigan right at the end of September.

Both sides were pointing fingers at each other in the media and then they finally got in the room and 96 hours later, they have a pretty decent budget that most people feel is positive.

So that's how this is going to end.

But the idea that somehow Democrats should just trust that the Republicans, you know, just reopen the government and we'll get to your stuff later.

Like, I got a bridge I want to sell you if that's what you actually believe, if you're, if you're willing to trust at this point.

Yeah.

I mean, John Thune is a much more persuasive messenger than Mike Johnson is, at least from my perspective.

Like, he feels like someone who genuinely does want government to work properly, but as you said, kind of a prisoner of the Trumpian way of getting things done.

And so he'll have to, you know, release the hounds, I guess is the

right way to say it.

I think that's right.

I actually think there's a number of senators on the Republican side who want to have government work the way it's supposed to.

But I got to say, wanting is different than actually acting that way.

And for all I think good intentions is important, it's not better than standing up for your branch of government and for what our founding fathers agreed to.

And I have to say, as well-intentioned as some of them may be, if you're not standing up and providing oversight and a pushback the way our founding fathers designed this system to be, and And you're just rolling over for whatever Donald Trump wants, it doesn't matter what your intentions are.

Your actions are how you're going to be judged.

Yes.

And, you know, there's three plus years left of the Trump administration.

And then who knows what happens?

I presume J.D.

Vance will be the candidate.

Do you feel like this kind of way of doing politics is going to carry on or that this is something specific to a Trump era?

Because I need some optimism about what could be.

Well, I certainly think that Donald Trump is like really a combination of things that is hard to just copy and paste.

And I've even heard from Republican colleagues, you know, in privacy behind closed doors who will say, like, yeah, you know, J.D.

Vance is going to run, but there will be others, you know, maybe Marco Rubio, you know, a couple of others out there.

And that no one kind of owns the MAGA world full and complete the way that Trump does.

He's someone that, you know, most of us grew up watching on like lifestyles of the rich and famous, right?

He has a certain persona, he had his own TV show.

And it's interesting to watch cracks in the MAGA world already, right?

I mean, Marjorie Taylor Green, I mean, good Lord, I have my strong problems with that lady, but she is showing and exposing these seams.

So to me, I don't think we'll ever have that total combo that allows Trump to just dominate.

But I do think politics is changing rapidly and it's become so performative that if you are someone who can't kind of roll, can't communicate, can't make yourself heard in different channels of communication, like that era of just kind of going on the nightly news or on meet the press and having that be enough is over officially.

And some will weather that and some will not.

So I think politics is changing, but I...

I do not think that J.D.

Vance is just going to step into his power.

I've seen enough like nasty MAGA fights.

And man, Democrats always joke like Democrats stab each other in the back, but Republicans shoot each other in the face.

I mean, they really fight when they fight.

So I've seen a lot of that up close.

And so I don't think we're settled on the air apparent.

I'd kind of like to see that a little bit more.

It felt to me like that big speech in front of all the generals from Pete Hagseth was a little bit of him putting his foot in saying, oh, maybe I could get in the mix.

Obviously, Marco Rubio would be someone to consider as well for 2028.

I want to go back.

You said Marjorie Taylor Greene, and it has been very weird for me to use her as evidence of how poorly Donald Trump is doing.

But it feels like what's going on right now with our farmers and our ranchers is also a big kind of fissure or crack in the MAGA world.

And they're all still saying, you know, we love you, Donald Trump, but please help us.

So you have the soybean crisis.

China's not buying any of our soybeans.

They're getting them from Argentina, who we just bailed out 40 billion so far.

And now that we're going to be importing Argentinian beef.

And Brooke Rollins has been dragged in a number of interviews about this.

I'm not sure how Trump is going to be able to get away with it.

Influencers like Tommy Laren, also outraged.

What do you think about that issue and whether something's going to change?

I should note as well that Senator Rounds and Deb Fisher have both spoken out too.

Yeah, and I thank them for that letter and speaking out and comments that they've been making.

We need more of that.

Yeah, I mean, look, I live on my family farm.

When I was growing up and little girl, it was beef cattle.

And now we lease our land to a soybean farmer who sometimes grows corn.

It's not good.

And the farmers who you're right are, you know, I don't think it's a secret.

Farmers tend to lean Republican, at least in Michigan.

And they're in a situation where the corn growers are already coming to me and saying, you know, I'm sorry, but we're going to need a bailout.

If you want us to survive, we're going to need a bailout.

So the retaliatory tariffs are devastating them, just like they did in Trump one.

I mean, this is the literally same repeat of the situation we had in Trump one, where the farmers pay the price and then they need billions of dollars in bailout.

And farmers do not like getting kind of a government check that way.

But that's the situation we're in.

And I think there's so many issues going on that people haven't focused on it, but that is coming to a theater near us is that the farmers need a bailout, not even 10 months into this administration because of his policies.

And then you add to that the insanity of bragging about bailing out Argentina.

Most Michiganders do no work with Argentina.

They may not know exactly who they are and what they care about.

So I think it's a mistake.

And, you know, that community, I think some of them will stick with the president, thinking there's a greater plan.

But the ones who have to deal with like, do I plant next year are looking at themselves and saying, I don't know if I can do this anymore.

And they're a very powerful voice.

Places like the Farm Bureau don't underestimate what those organizations, the sway they have in Washington.

But a lot of organizations have been real tepid in the last nine months.

They've been really cautious.

Fear is an incredible weapon that keeps people from speaking their minds.

But I think they're starting to feel their oats because their community is just being wiped out.

Yeah, do you think that the connective tissue or the connecting the dots has permeated into those communities?

Because I, you know, I'm wary of getting up there on TV and, you know, making a case about why we're bailing out Argentina to say, well, you know, Scott Besson is really good friends with this guy, Rob Citrone, and like Pimco is very invested in Argentina and Fidelity and BlackRock and these things that don't make a tremendous amount of difference to a person who's just trying to get to the next day or thinking about if they can plant next year.

So do you feel like this broader kind of grift argument or Donald Trump just doing favors for people that like him or are going to do one in return is breaking through?

I think it can't just be about, I mean, look, people elected Donald Trump knowing the kind of character he had, that no one was guessing, right, about Donald Trump.

I think it's like this corruption is going on and therefore you're getting the shaft.

It's that second part, right?

It's you have to connect it to people.

And trust me, the meat industry over the last nine months and then watching this Argentina decision, they understand that decisions to partner with Argentina have a zero-sum result on them.

That to me, that second part is very important because otherwise people are just trying to like send their kids to summer camp, you know, afford a trip to go see the grandparents, like whatever it is.

And so they don't have time to follow the news every single day with the 10 or 12 things that are happening.

They have to understand it as connected to their pocketbooks and their kids.

And then they are deeply motivated.

That's good to know.

And I'll lay off the Rob Citrone talk probably on the five liter.

I wanted to talk to you about this big editorial in the New York Times about moderates, about you, and you were name-checked in the piece, talking about how we might be kind of overcome with this fantasy world of how progressives are doing super well.

And obviously, AOC and Bernie and the fighting oligarchy tour has been a big flashpoint, but that it's moderate Democrats that are winning and overperforming.

What do you make of that?

And what would you say your brand of politics can really be summed up as?

Oh, that's an interesting question.

Well, first of all, I think the bigger message is that Democrats are a big tent.

What works in Manhattan doesn't really always work in a place like Kansas or Arkansas or Michigan.

And it's okay, right?

We don't have to turn our guns on each other.

I think what's actually positive from a unity point of view is that right now, like I know there's a lot of talk, you know, moderate versus progressive, and there always is because I don't know, that is a very favorite story of the media.

They love that.

But the commonalities, the two things that are coming out of the American public like a bright blinking light, whether you're in Manhattan or Kansas, are the cost of living is still the animating issue.

And the pursuit of the American dream, which feels harder and harder, is the animating issue of our time.

And people are desperate for a new generation of leaders, period.

Like those are the common things.

So that is good.

I think that's a positive thing that there's unifying information.

And if something works in Manhattan, great.

Let that happen for Manhattan.

But that may not be the answer and cure-all to Michigan.

And I think the issue is, like to me, when you have a president of the United States who is literally threatening our democracy this is not the time to be focusing only on our differences this is a time to be uniting and coming up with combined strategies that play to each other's strengths and go forward and defend our democracy and so you know i in terms of what my brand is i guess i don't know it's just like can we please play some offense

Offense.

I come from a national security background.

There is no winning a war.

There is no winning a game in sports without an offense.

And I'm really sick of playing weak defense where people turn their guns on each other.

So I don't know what that brand is, but that's what wakes me up in the morning, or frankly, in the middle of the night.

Like, God damn.

Sorry, I don't know if I can swear on something.

Oh, definitely.

Yeah.

Shoot.

Can we please get our shit together and play some offense?

That to me is more important than the differences I have with more progressive members of my own party.

We're going to take a quick break.

Stay with us.

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Welcome back.

You mentioned the new generation of leaders, and there is a primary going on in Maine right now with a

gerontocracy question.

Governor Janet Mills just got in about a week and a half ago.

Graham Plattner, a veteran oyster farmer, had been in the race for a while, raised a a tremendous amount of money, $4 million.

It has recently come out.

He had some very offensive Reddit posts, and he also has a tattoo, a kind of Nazi.

I actually didn't know this particular one.

I always just think of swastikas, but the skull and bones thing that he says he never knew was associated with the SS.

What do you think is going to happen?

Do you think Graham Plattner is going to be forced to drop out?

And then, yeah, do you think Graham Plattner is going to drop out of the race um i honestly i mean i i will be very honest i've seen about as much as you just described in your description i haven't gotten into it we got a lot of open races in michigan that i spend a lot more time on um and i don't i don't really know where maynors land on this like i i don't have a sense on the ground if what he's done is like a definitive thing for them or not Certainly, I've seen him online, right?

And catch fire.

And again, I think that fight, that like willingness to push has with candidates across the country, I think has been important.

But I really don't, I just don't know.

Yeah.

I don't know any of the candidates.

I don't, I don't know.

Yeah, I was hoping you could tell me because I don't know either.

My expectation is eventually it'll happen, but it has been interesting to see that the top Senate recruits in states that we're hoping to flip in North Carolina, in Maine, in Ohio are all older people, right?

Sherrod Brown, Roy Cooper, Janet Mills, that's who Chuck Schumer and the DSCC has been focused on.

Do you think that that's the right strategy?

Or do you wish the party was more focused on younger candidates?

So here's the thing.

Can we please just focus on winning?

Okay.

That could be an older person.

Like, I'm sorry, Roy Cooper in North Carolina, you know, a former governor.

Like, and again, I don't know North Carolina, great, but that is a true like state that's been read.

And like maybe we can push it towards purple and even blue.

But to me, what I care about is that Democrats get serious and ruthless about winning these seats, not just like what makes us feel good.

And we've all had those candidates that catch fire across the country, right?

That go viral and then they lose by 20 points.

And so like, I'm glad that I'm thrilled that good people get in these races, but I think we just need to be, look, the other side is ruthless.

So can we also please be ruthless?

So I don't think it's like, let's go around the country and recruit our oldest candidates.

I don't, I hope, and I would say the same hope to Chuck Schumer, who's doing a lot of this recruiting.

I hope we're ruthlessly focused on winning and that if you're going to nominate people who are on the older side, you better have a path to victory that you can explain.

And same thing for a young person who catches fire in the internet, but sometimes doesn't.

We've seen this story over and over, right?

Like a beto or something like they catch fire nationally and everyone knows their name, you know, all over Democratic circles in New York and California, but then they don't win.

And Texas is hard.

So I, you know, but you get my point.

It's just, and I think that means saying to the wing of our party who's like, you know, if you're not under 35, you're not a candidate I want to hear from.

Sometimes in a, like my state is an older state, right?

We're one of the oldest states in the country.

Like that matters when you're trying to win in a swing state.

So I think

just be ruthless about winning, please.

Yeah, I agree.

And I have spent a lot of money on Better Rourke and Amy McGrath, who's running again, and

Sarah Gideon in Maine, who still has a lot of money in her war chest.

So I understand the frustration.

Part of what we're seeing with Democratic candidates in their pursuit of winning is a shift in the way that they talk about Israel.

And

this whole move like Seth Moulton, who's challenging Ed Markey now saying, you know, I'm giving back my AIPAC money.

You've seen a shift in how Mallory McMorrow, who's running for the other Michigan Senate seat, is talking about Israel and Netanyahu and what has happened in Gaza.

What do you make of that shift?

And how are you feeling about the future of

Jewish Democrats?

Because, you know, I'm here in New York City.

I'm Jewish.

People are very concerned that Israel has become a topic so perilous on our side that we can barely talk about it.

And that for the first time in polling history, more people sympathize with the Palestinians than the Israelis.

Yeah.

I mean, look, on AIPAC,

they're an American advocacy organization that has the right to advocate for the things that they care about.

There's Pakistani groups that do the same thing.

There's, you know, Pakistani American groups.

So I think they have the right to do what they're going to do.

And everyone has to decide whether they're going to take their endorsement, their support.

For me, long before Gaza started, I made the decision not to take their endorsement and their money anymore.

That was in early 2022, mostly because of January 6th.

And I thought I had an issue with some of the people that they were endorsing and their role in January 6th as someone who barricaded herself in her office on that day.

And so that to me,

is

even before everything started, but I think everyone has to make their own decisions.

What I don't love are like litmus tests that Democrats put on everyone and everything.

And in the spirit of like, we got to win, we got to represent a wide swath of people because again, what may be super popular online might not be something that I'm even asked about in a place like rural Michigan.

Let's try to have a big tent on a whole bunch of issues.

I think there's litmus tests set up on environmental issues, on a ton of things.

So I think what you're seeing though is a response to how many people, even people who have long time been very pro-Israel, deep concerns with how Israel prosecuted the war in Gaza.

And the use, I mean, for me, certainly the use and withholding.

of food and humanitarian aid as an act in war is a line that for me was totally crossed.

So calling balls and strikes on what you see,

I think, first of all, that's what I've tried to do myself, but I think that's what you're seeing reflected in some of these decisions.

Some of them are just going to be, frankly, crassly political, right?

Some people are going to make those decisions because it's like, oh, you know, this is.

I want to win.

Right.

But certainly for someone like me who worked in national security circles and has, you know, served three tours in Iraq alongside the military and seen warfare up close, that line of withholding food and aid crossed something for me.

And I think you're seeing that reflected in a much wider way across the party.

Absolutely.

I want to keep your national security hat on and talk about what's going on right now in the Caribbean.

So we have reportedly 32 dead, seven individual strikes.

You have the Colombian president saying that a fisherman was killed.

You have two people from Trinidad.

You know, we've repatriated also folks instead of trying them, people who have survived these strikes.

What do you think is going on?

So I think what we're seeing right now, and again, there's so much news, so it's like hard for people to really focus on any one thing, but I would just say as someone from the national security world, this is

a pretty big shift in the use of force in the name of the United States of America.

Not because I have a problem with people smuggling drugs, like going after those guys, but because the administration will not name the groups that they have designated as terrorists.

They won't tell us the number of groups that they're going after.

They won't show us the intelligence that's leading to these strikes.

Nothing.

And again, I worked my entire life before elected office going after groups like al-Qaeda, ISIS, designated terrorist organizations.

So again, like if they came to us and said, hey, these are the groups, you know, there's 50 groups, there's 20 groups, there's 10 groups.

Here's how we got to that point.

And here's what we know they're doing in terms of transiting fentanyl.

Like, I think a lot of us on the Armed Services Committee would be on board with that.

But it is using lethal force without A, naming for the American public who we're going after, B, releasing the legal justification.

I mean, they are doing some gymnastics to to get to legal justification.

And then thirdly, most important, is what this means when it's combined with the executive order the president put out in September on domestic terrorist groups.

He tasked the Department of Justice to say, okay, I'm already going after these unnamed terrorist organizations outside the United States.

Please come up with a list of domestic terrorist organizations and tell me the resources that you're going to use to go after them.

That,

if we extrapolate and say what's going on in the Caribbean, no visibility, secret war.

What does that mean for what they'll do on the domestic side?

What does that mean about using the intelligence community to use law enforcement, to use the IRS?

I mean, they listed in their executive order this extremely broad definition of what they mean by a potential terrorist group.

There we cross into something very different that's like from the history books of secret terrorist organizations inside the United States that we're turned the U.S.

military and law enforcement against.

So the Caribbean strikes are a real sort of issue of governance and use of force on their own.

But when you take what they're doing there and just move it into the continental United States,

there we get to a fundamental issue of democracy that should send a shiver down the spine of every American.

Do any of your Republican colleagues share your concern about this?

Privately, I know, publicly, not so much.

So, we did have a classified hearing on the Caribbean strikes, which frankly, I'm not sure why it had to be classified, but that was the way that the Republicans felt comfortable getting the information.

And I will say, there are a number of my Republican colleagues who had issues with this same problem in the Caribbean strikes, the lack of transparency, not knowing the names.

And some of that came out in a couple of public hearings, like a little bit, you know, a little bit.

So, privately, I mean, to be an oversight committee like the Armed Services Committee and just not be able to get the names of the terrorist groups we're going after is pretty insulting.

So, there's also a pride issue that's being insulted by the leaders of these groups, but you know, not enough for them to do a press conference about it or send a letter, a strongly worded letter.

So, I appreciate that they're concerned, but again, it's not just about how you feel.

The world is about how you act.

And they're not acting.

Last question.

What's one thing that makes you rage and one thing you think we should all calm down about?

Oh.

Gosh, you know, I think most people right now have that like quick to anger feeling.

Rage is a pretty high bar for me.

It doesn't have to be.

It can just be angry.

Just real angry.

I think, again, watching my colleagues on on the other side of the aisle roll over and just do whatever Trump says after they've sworn an oath to the Constitution is pretty difficult to watch.

And watching it in hearings, watching it on the floor, watching it, you know, in this shutdown, I mean, do you know how neutered they all must feel that the budgets that they work on and they chair these committees, it's their budget, are just getting swept aside and Donald Trump's just spending money willy-nilly that has not been appropriated?

I mean, it's insulting to them, but they don't do anything about it.

So that fills me with frustration.

In terms of what I think we all need to calm down about, man, I will say that Donald Trump is using a deliberate strategy to flood the zone with so much information and so many stories and so many news items that people get distracted and he's succeeding.

And so what sometimes I think we need to calm down about is like certain things are what I'd call strategic and irreversible problems for democracy, like troops in our streets and designating secret terrorist organizations inside the United States.

But like, you know, don't take the bait on him buying Greenland.

You know what I mean?

Like, just, I feel like there's some people who kind of rage against all these things.

Pick the things that are both strategic and irreversible to democracy and go deep on those things, as opposed to taking the bait every single day on every one of his crazy issues.

Yeah, it is exhausting.

And I try to do that as well.

Great answers.

And Senator Slaughtkin, it was so nice to have you.

Thank you.

Thanks for having me.

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