DAVID HOGG Talks Parkland, DNC, Saving the Party

Oh, you just got dumped?

Oh, yeah.

How recently?

Two months ago or something.

Oh, my God.

You're in it right now.

And you're trying to save the Democrats?

I know.

Bro,

I just like throwing challenges on top of challenges.

What albums are you listening to post-breakup?

There's a song called Wicked Game that's very good.

Chris Isaac?

Mm-hmm.

That's a horny ass song.

And then...

What?

You're listening to sex songs post-breakup?

Well, you know what the song's actually about, right?

I feel like somebody.

I feel like he's like,

I'm watching someone having sex listening to that song.

Well,

wonderful images.

That's a great imitation.

Hello and welcome to the Adam Freelance Show and as always I just want to thank our members and our patrons who help support the show, help keep the lights on.

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and if you join at the second or third tier, you'll get your name in the credits of every episode.

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My guest this week is former vice chair of the DNC David Hogg.

He first rose to prominence, of course, in 2018 in the wake of the Marjorie Stoneman Douglas school shooting when he organized a series of high-profile protests in support of gun control.

More recently, in 2023, he founded Leaders We Deserve PAC to help young progressive candidates get elected to public office.

But before we show you the interview, I need to address something.

As many of you know, things have changed quite dramatically in my life over the last few months.

Laudatory profiles have been published in the New York Times, which is my favorite newspaper, and the New Yorker, which is a periodical that I've been meaning to check out.

Once I will.

It's on my list.

You know, the literati are starting to pay attention, but I promise to you, the viewers, I'm never going to change.

I'm the same old bitch, okay?

On Monday, I finally got the call up to the big leagues, the one I've been waiting for.

I was asked to appear as a panelist on the Piers Morgan program.

Now,

whenever I get the question, who are your guys?

I always say three names.

Number one, Bob Dylan, of course.

Number two, Martin Luther King, MLK, some people know him as.

And number three, of course, is Mr.

Piers Morgan.

And I just can't tell you guys how riveting and thrilling I found the conversation on his program to be.

Join me now to debate Charlie Kirk, Jimmy Kimmel, and the battle for free speech.

He's the CEO of Timcast Media, Tim Paul, the man the New Yorker has called the future of late night, host of the hugely successful show, The Adam Friedland Show, comedian Adam Friedland.

So where do you sit with all this?

I am a tell-it-like-it-is comedian.

There's a lot of kind of empathy being expressed towards Kimmel right now.

But

where is the empathy for Donald Trump?

Certainly conservative comics like Dennis Miller, Michael Richards, Kill Tony.

I detect a slight sarcasm to your

Bob Iger will go down in media history as Neville Chamberlain in a cashmere sweater minus the dignity.

What do you think of that?

People always use Neville Chamberlain as a historical reference

to prove that no Democrats ever celebrated a a cancellation on the right.

I agree with you.

Tim Paul,

listen, Bob Iger jumped up on his desk and started tap dancing when this controversy started because it's there's a real visceral reluctance to have people on the right even engaging in debate.

And that's that's got to change.

Not on the Adam Freeman show.

Not on my show.

Well, your show's great.

That's why I'm not sure.

I think it's an issue.

I think there's an issue.

After I recorded the episode, I was a nervous wreck all day.

I was waiting around for the episode to be released.

And finally, something popped up on this popular social media platform X.com.

But what I saw devastated me to no end.

Mr.

Morgan posted a tweet with a clip to the episode that referred to me as comedian Adam Friedman.

To be deliberately attacked by one of my heroes,

frankly, has broken me.

I found it difficult to get out of bed.

I found it difficult to listen to my girlfriend's awesome and interesting and hilarious stories.

Perhaps Mr.

Morgan is threatened by my recent ascent in the political chat show space, or perhaps, God forbid,

this was a well-orchestrated, deliberate act of anti-Semitism.

We don't all look the same.

Some of us are good at money.

Some of us are good at books.

And I happen to be good at neither.

So Mr.

Morgan, I'd like to invite you to come on my program and to settle this like a man.

My name is Adam Dean Friedland.

It's the only name I have.

I got it from my mother and father.

And you'll be seeing a whole lot more of me, Piers.

So here's my conversation with David Hogg.

And I'll see you

again in a minute.

One minute.

Our next guest is president and co-founder of Leaders We Deserve.

He first came to national attention in 2018.

David Hogg, everyone.

You can clap, guys.

What's wrong with you people?

Hey, Adam, how are you?

Very well.

Thanks for coming, dude.

Thank you.

I love the studio audience.

President and co-founder, so you made the other guy be less than you.

No.

No, you started the club.

We just have different roles.

Coffee, coffee run, Starbucks.

That's not it at all.

What does he do?

He does a lot more of the internal mechanics, and I'm a lot more front-facing.

Dude, D.C.

is awesome, dude.

You live there?

Yeah, I do.

Where in DC?

I would get into that, but my house has been SWATTE before and stuff, so I prefer not to do that.

That's just a thing that people do now.

Yeah.

We had Taylor Lorenz.

She said her parents get, did they SWAT team?

That's horrible.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's just what happens in Parkland it happened to my my family.

You were a junior or senior when you when the events happened.

Is that right?

I was a senior.

And you're a senior and just adults were pissed at you.

Like there's a lot of people for the rest of your life.

Adults were pissed at you.

Yeah, you became an adult.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But like, I just, you kind of like, it's strange.

We had, because we had that kid, Harry Sassan, too.

Right, I was like,

he gets yelled at by, like, dads.

Really?

I mean, like, if you look at his comments, it's just like, it's kind of like

you kids got like a Thunberg kind of treatment where it's like you were very altruistic and then people were like, fuck these babies, like, you know, fuck these kids, right?

And it's a strange kind of impulse.

What do you think that was like?

Or what was it like when you first started experiencing that?

Honestly, in the beginning, we were so focused after Parthland on just getting change and like raising hell to force change to happen, that I wasn't that focused on it.

But eventually, it did break through more because I remember the first time somebody asked me, Oh, have you gotten your first death threat?

and just said that casually to me as a 17-year-old.

I was like, What?

And then I someone gave you a death threat or asked you?

No, somebody asked, Oh, have you started getting them yet?

Like, just like, it's an inevitability.

And I was like, What are you talking about?

And then I got really kind of paranoid and freaked out about it, of course, because I was 17.

And

I think the

one of the worst

sorry, one of the really hard things that happened after Parkland when you're like speaking out after something like that that happened to a lot of the students that spoke out was

we would, for example, do an interview and a TV producer would be like, oh, you kids are so inspiring, can I get a photo with you?

And what do you do in a photo Adam?

You smile most of the time, right?

Or that.

And

when we smiled in that photo and they would put out those photos, a lot of right-wingers would take those photos and say,

these are the faces that you make when you're standing on the bodies of your dead classmates.

Yeah, yeah.

And

to be told that, like,

it's such a fucking psychotic world.

It's horrible.

Yeah, yeah.

But we actually internalized it.

And we told ourselves it wasn't okay to be happy.

It wasn't okay to have any amount of joy because of what we went through.

And it took a long time for us to unlearn that because I think those people knew.

that what do you mean it wasn't okay to be happy you were depressed you mean well that it wasn't okay to have any amount of joy or ever smile because you had survived a school shooting.

Does that make sense?

So in the pictures, you were frowning, right?

Well, in photos.

I'm sorry, I'm a stupid.

Sorry, I'm not sure.

No, no, no.

What I'm saying is, for example, there's one photo that we took with a producer after an interview that we did with them where the producer was like, oh, you kids are so amazing.

Like, can I take a photo with you?

Naturally, no matter really what you've gone through, you still smile in a photo.

even if it's you know a few weeks after or whatever and the right would take those photos and say these are the bodies that you're these are the faces that you make when you're standing on the bodies of the dead class.

And that was like that game, that was like a popular response that you guys were getting.

And we really internalized it because obviously we have a lot of survivor's guilt.

We have a lot of PTSD.

And

for a long time, we told ourselves it wasn't okay to be happy.

And you also just had to become part of the adult world.

Or the mess of the adult world.

And not only the regular adult world where you're going to the accountancy firm and then you're watching the office after work.

I can't imagine what it would be like at 17 or 18 to be

known.

I don't know.

I can't, like, how did you handle that?

Like, just like

just the pri, you know, like being a private kid, you know, what were you doing before that?

Cross-country running?

In case you couldn't tell.

Did you blame?

You were blazing up?

No.

You didn't blaze up.

I was a serious athlete.

I had to, and my dad was an FBI agent, too.

So

as you can imagine.

He's at Narfco?

Yeah.

No.

Did he go undercover?

He had in the past.

So your dad used to have different looks.

He'd be like biker

for six months.

No, he wasn't a biker, and I can talk about this now because he had to be able to do it.

He'd be like ISIS terrorist cell for six months.

Well, no, as you can imagine, a guy who is my father doesn't presumably fit in very well.

I don't know.

He's an actor.

I mean, he could play any role.

But

yeah,

when he started out in the FBI, his job was he would go undercover and dig through different people's trash to help build.

He's a hobo.

Yeah, he would go undercover.

He was a hobo.

He's a government hobo.

yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So your dad's an FBI agent, your mom's a teacher.

Yep.

Right.

Yep.

Did you go to parties?

Did I go to parties?

Did he get brewed?

Not very much.

Did you have beers or blunts before?

You were just a running kid?

I was a pretty big nerd.

I would say that.

Student government?

Absolutely not.

Not that big of a nerd.

Did you play gaming?

I did play a lot of Call of Duty in Modern Warfare.

And I actually still do play.

I still do play a good amount of Call of Duty

on my phone.

And it's kind of hilarious because you know i'm sure i'm playing with a lot of guys that are playing mobile yeah that are playing you know guys that i'm sure to some extent are to the right of me a lot of the time yeah yeah yeah and i get pretty good and i'll get like first place and i'll get all the likes and like people following me stuff and they'll be like this is great whatever you just got and i'm just the hog exactly and i'm just always laughing because i'm like if only you knew like because i can only imagine how you want to beat them in in nazi zombies yeah you want to cook them in nazi zombies yeah i played fifa for a while but it was just kids in like saudi arabia that were 11 just beasting.

I could lose like 11-1.

Yeah.

And yeah, it really hurt my feelings.

And you didn't lock in?

I don't have the time, dude.

I'm 38.

I can't get back into video games.

I tried to.

I played Red Dead, though.

Oh, really?

How was that?

You disappear from the world, right?

You're like not in the world?

It's kind of crazy.

I'd like to check my phone.

I thought it was like 9.45.

It would be like 4 a.m.

Yeah.

It was amazing, though.

It was one of the most special experiences of my life.

My girlfriend asked if she could play for a second and then she punched my horse in the face and I was like, can you just give it back to me?

What are you doing?

Let me play Cowboys.

Yeah, no, I can't game.

So wait, so you were just a nerd?

You were like,

were you in clubs or anything?

Yeah, so like I helped start a drone racing team at my high school.

Drone racing?

Yeah, it is as nerdy as you imagine.

And the only woman that ever showed up to that was my sister when she had to as a freshman because I had to drive her home.

Oh my God.

So there was that and I was also in TV production and I think this is oh you did AV kind of stuff.

Yeah yeah.

So this is I think this is a really important component of the story that a lot of people don't know about what happened after Parkland and I think part of the reason why it went things

happened the way that they did after the shooting was our school had a pretty good TV production program and we had a pretty advanced speech and debate program.

I did speech and debate.

So I was in speech and debate as well.

What did you do?

I did PF and Extemp.

I did LD and XT.

I did Xtemp.

Don't even get me started on the spreading in LD.

No, no, no.

Did you spread a lot?

Policy is spreading.

Well, LD does spread a lot.

They think that they're going to think we're some sort of nasty, nasty.

Spreading is that you talk really fast.

Yeah, it's not.

It's not like...

Yeah,

it's not Sharon Stone, okay?

Okay, it's where you try to get as much evidence out, and he's wrong because it's policy debate.

He's lying.

No, policy knows it more.

LD is philosophical.

It's about you to give great speeches and stuff.

Regardless, there's more.

It's too emotional.

In LD, that can happen than PF, typically.

What's PF?

Public form.

Oh, you just did government.

That's like the government.

You know, Robert's rules of whatever order.

Well, so

I don't know how much of that actually has to do with PF, but

in terms of Robert's rules of order, but the point I was getting at is that I really wanted to be a broadcast journalist when I was in high school.

Like, do the news.

Do the news.

Like, I grew up.

I kind of wanted to be like a,

I didn't know who this person was at the time, but in hindsight,

I wanted to be like Mike Wallace if you're familiar with 60 minutes, yeah.

Kind of, yeah.

And the thing about Mike Wallace is like he would just grill people.

And I really wanted to be a journalist that scared the hell out of really powerful people that I saw as corrupt, inept, and some combination of just stupid, generally speaking.

So I would start making TV production content about at a small scale, like in my high school, where we wouldn't have enough Spanish textbooks, but we had to have them for our classes and stuff.

So I'd go and talk to the principal.

Exactly.

And then all of a sudden we'd have enough Spanish textbooks, right?

Really, it worked.

Yeah, I mean,

they responded to the children.

Oh, this hog is

getting too big for his britches.

I guess.

And because of being in TV production and speech and debate, I had to argue about guns prior to the shooting.

I had to argue about universal background.

You're media trained also.

To some extent, because of TV production.

Yeah.

Right?

So I knew how to talk on camera and I knew the issues that I needed to talk about.

So when we went out there, myself and a lot of my other classmates, we sounded unnaturally good on camera, unnaturally good at

knowing the policy issues, because our public education actually did its job.

But instead, people chose to believe that we worked for the FBI or we worked for some government agency because they find it more believable that we would work for some three-letter agency than the fact that our own education system could actually do its job.

And that's part of the reason why there were so many conspiracy theories that happened after the shooting.

For example, there was a clip where

they would take clips of me where I was doing, you know, what I learned in TV production where like instinctually sometimes if you want to redo a take or something, like you count down from like five, right?

I would do that and people are like, see, like he's trained.

And it's like, to some extent, yeah, because of TV production, but not because it's a massive conspiracy.

Yeah, yeah.

You don't have to protect.

You don't have to.

No, but I think that's an important note.

I think it is, but like, you don't have to explain yourself.

You saw kids getting killed at your school and you wanted to talk about it.

Well, so that's another.

And you were good at talking about it because you're smart.

Well, a lot of our classmates saw all kinds of things and our school that I think a lot of people don't understand for context too is like we're an outdoor school.

Exactly.

So like schools in the northeast, like they're all typically under one roof.

Like there's like an open courtyard, right?

At our school, it's like 13 different buildings.

So I was in the building next to where the shooting happened.

My classmates and I, like, we heard gunshots echoing between the buildings, but we didn't end up seeing anybody in terms of the students that I was immediately around die.

Yeah.

But a lot of our classmates did.

And it's a huge high school.

It's 3,300 people when I was in the middle of the day.

A janitor kept you, like, say, like, saved you from going to wards.

So

that's one other thing, too, Adam.

I have never found that person since.

What do you mean?

How?

He worked at the school.

I know.

And I think.

We gotta find this guy.

I thought I found him at like an event a lot after the shooting.

I have no idea.

What the fuck?

I know.

That's so weird.

I know.

And I went up to the guy that I fire him?

Where did he go?

This is bugging me right now.

So what Adam's getting at for further context so that people understand, as the shooting happened,

I was exiting my

classroom because we initially thought it was like a fire drill or like a potential like active shooter drill or something like that.

As we're exiting our classroom, we go to like our evacuation zone and all of a sudden a flood of students start going in the opposite direction of where I'm going.

And

naturally, you start following those students.

As we're following those students, unbeknownst to us at the time, because you don't know if there are multiple shooters, you don't know if it's a drill, you don't know.

You just hear bullets.

Like you just hear gunshots and like you don't know what's going on.

You don't know if there are bombs on campus.

You don't know anything, right?

And we were instinctually, I was instinctually kind of following the crowd.

And as we were running, I was actually running towards where the Feshland building was, where the shooting was happening.

So it's total chaos.

And there's some kind of janitor that I've,

when i went up to the person some kind of janitor i think it was a janitor i don't know if it was a teacher saying it that way some kind of janitor somebody came out that was an adult and said like don't come this way

i don't know could have been like a bagger vance could have been wow but they came out and said like don't come this way and

as he said that our culinary teacher opened up her classroom

That was like the closest classroom to us and got about, in an incredible act of heroism, got about 60 or 70 students into her classroom in what felt like the matter of like 30 seconds.

Yeah.

Where I would spend the rest of the time in lockdown, obviously, after the shooting.

And as we're there, you don't know like if you're about to die.

Kids are having panic attacks.

Kids are trying to be quiet.

I'm texting my sister, who's 14 years old at the time.

She's freaking out, understandably.

She was at the school as well.

Yeah.

Thank God she was on the other side of the school, even though she was a freshman.

She was in our TV production class.

So I ended up interviewing my classmates

not just as a way of keeping myself calm because I didn't have anything else.

Like you were on the news?

Kind of like we were like as a student journalist.

Like I took up my phone and started interviewing them in case we did die.

In the middle of it?

Yeah.

Whoa.

Well, like for your parents to see, like.

For whoever to see, in case something did happen,

that there would be a record of like these kids saying, like, we need to do something about guns.

Ah, interesting.

And it was a way of me keeping myself calm in that moment too, because I remember my dad talking about these types of things growing up, being an FBI FBI agent, about like the necessity of staying calm.

And I interviewed them and I asked them, What do you think about the N-rate?

What do you think about the fact that we're going through this and everything?

And thankfully that day,

the classmates in my immediate vicinity and I made it out, but 17 of our classmates and teachers didn't in the building right next door to us.

And did you like post, you posted it while it was happening?

Not while it was happening.

I think I ended up,

this is like eight years ago now, Autumn, so it's kind of a blur, but I think what I ended up doing was I sent it first to our

I was working for like as like basically some whatever is lower than an intern like basically that for the local paper at the time I was very bad at my job and I sent it to like my producer the person that was there oh like to go on the to go on the news yeah

yeah fuck I mean I'm sure that's like a way that you could distract yourself right

and focus on something else.

Did you ever meet Nicholas Cruz?

I mean,

did you know who he was?

No.

I mean, our school is 3,000 people.

It's a big school.

I don't remember meeting him ever.

And I also...

Is it true that Broward County Sheriff's Department, there were like multiple red flags?

Yes.

Yeah.

Because I don't think people talk about that enough.

Well, yeah, that's the crazy thing to me.

You have an instance here where the system has failed in multiple major ways, right?

The police were called, I think it was over a dozen times.

in the one to two years before the shooting to the shooter's house

about different disturbances disturbances that were happening.

And despite the fact that he couldn't purchase an AR-15 because he was not, or sorry, despite the fact that he could not purchase a handgun because he was not 21 yet, he couldn't illegally purchase that from a federally licensed dealer, he could purchase an AR-15

because he was above the age of 18,

which is the logic of the NRA, right?

That's still the law?

So, kind of.

For the most part, it is.

So depressing.

The only addition I'll make to that is after the Valde and Buffalo massacres, Congress changed the laws passing the first federal gun law in 30 years

where they expanded background checks for people under the age of 21 attempting to buy guns,

which is nowhere near enough to be clear.

But I will note there have been over, I think it's over 1,500 people that are high-risk individuals that the FBI has documented that previously would have been allowed to purchase guns like the AR-15 that because of that enhanced background check have since been prevented.

Which is nowhere near enough.

To be clear.

It's a tough challenge.

To be clear.

Gun control is a tough one.

It is.

I mean, I feel like I forgot about it.

I feel like it's so chaotic.

Mass shootings are also so common.

And then just also, yeah, the world has turned into so psycho.

It's like, as like a, it seems like it's like from like the 1990s or something.

It seems like it's like from the West Wing.

It's numbing.

almost.

Yeah.

And I mean, it must be for you, like, for that to be where you're coming from.

Like, that's like, you know, it must be.

I remember Obama crying on TV.

Do you remember that?

Yeah.

Of course.

I remember posting about Sandy Hook when I was in middle school.

Yeah.

Being like, how could this happen?

This is so disturbing.

You were in middle school for San Diego.

That happened in the middle of the year.

I think I was in middle school.

I think I was in seventh grade.

And

correct me if I'm wrong, kids in schools now are like there's mass shooting training.

Is that a thing?

Yes.

So that's, damn.

Yes.

It is.

It's horrifying.

I was just watching American Pie.

I was like, by the end of this year, we're all getting laid.

It's very simple.

It was like, you're like, you're going to school in like a, you know, fucking in Blackhawk Down or whatever.

You know, like,

it's horrifying.

You should have seen it, dude.

It was a great country, man.

I was mad at Bush, but that feels quaint at this point now.

Yeah, I mean.

Still lots to be mad about.

So, okay, so let's talk about like...

After the fact, and we touched on that earlier.

So like,

one thing I remember from Twitter was that, like, like there was also like right there was like a that kid kyle right he was like on the right wing side of like uh the parkland kids like you guys got politicized for sure right and like you guys became symbols and um what i'll say this what what i will say now he's chill now not to interrupt you though i think i i this won't make the episode i ran into him once he came up to me he's like dude i'm not right wing anymore i'm chill What yeah, yeah, yeah.

People

like, dude, I don't give a fuck about that shit anymore, dude.

Like, he's like, I'm just trying to, like, chill.

I live in the city.

Okay.

It's kind of nice, right?

Yeah, I mean...

If that was news to you, I'm glad I brought this up.

What's crazy to me is that I literally got a call from him immediately after this shooting to him like

trying to like challenge me to a fight in the cafeterium.

What's that dawn?

I was like,

I don't want to say go.

I don't know.

And I was like, what the hell are you talking about, man?

Why was he mad at you immediately after?

Because you did those interviews?

I think because we were speaking out and saying what we thought needed to be done.

Right.

And he obviously didn't agree.

Which, like, look, people can have their differences of opinion.

He was speaking out himself.

Adam, I.

You were also kids.

What I'll say is this, Michael.

Just be optimistic.

That's what really pissed me off.

I cut you off, but that's what really pissed me off about the response.

You're supposed to be like, let's change the world when you're 17.

Like, that's what you're supposed to be.

You're supposed to be dumb enough to believe that change is actually possible.

Yeah, sure, fine.

Well, now they're all Republicans.

Well, not all of them.

We We can go to that later.

We'll go to that later, sir.

But that's fucking weird to me, you know?

It's fucking weird.

It's normal.

It is extremely weird.

It's normal that you're like,

we're going to get together and we're going to do something.

Like,

you're supposed to have that optimism at that age.

And, like, there's a, you know,

this might go nowhere, okay?

But I don't know if you remember when there was, like, that kid, Nick Sandman, like, in DC.

There's that kid with the MAGA hat and the Native American.

Oh, right.

And then, like, it was like, that picture was taken and put in all these newspapers and stuff like that.

Like everyone's like wanted to fucking like be like, this kid's evil.

Fuck this kid.

I think that kid actually got paid.

I think he sued all these news organizations because what it doesn't matter.

But there was part of me that was a little bit like, listen, he's 17 years old.

Like people's opinions change.

Like, you know, I'm,

you know, people are allowed to like be kids and like, you know, grow up, you know?

And a little bit, yeah, that kid's wearing a mag hat, but it's just like, he's not Donald Trump.

Like, he's just a kid that's like, maybe his parents are Republican.

Maybe, I mean, it's just like holding kids accountable, like, and

you experienced this yourself.

It's like, it's a little bit like, it's just like the way society treats younger people nowadays.

It's just like,

it's,

the world that you guys inherited is terrible.

Like, I got sick.

My shit was awesome.

People had SUVs and I mean, you had the Iraq War, too.

That was not great.

We were at PF Changs.

Let's see if

the hottest girls in my school were the hostesses at PF Changs and I go with my parents and I'd want to throw up because I'm like, she's going to find out I have parents.

We've all been.

She's going to think I'm a loser, you know?

I mean, it's just...

Did you ever end up asking her out?

No, of course.

What do you think?

No.

Why do you, that's why I'm doing this.

I don't know.

I would have been fucking running Halliburton or something.

Yeah.

I don't know.

No, no, of course not.

She was probably dating an adult.

I was like, I was in.

Why am I holding this?

They do not sponsor the show.

Sorry.

Icelandic Glacial?

It's probably from Jersey, bro.

Yeah.

It's a joke.

Hoboken water.

The shit that we fall for.

Going back to the fact that you were kind of a loner, a bit of a loner, prior to the other.

I had friends, to be clear.

Who are your friends?

Who are my friends?

A lot of other speech and debate kids.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Right.

So, yes.

And there were a couple chicks on the.

There were a couple chicks.

Well, I tried.

I mean, there were, like, girls that were there.

Yeah, yeah, of course.

And we were dominating them with facts and logic.

Yeah, I mean, the worst of us were.

Are you in a relationship?

Am I in a relationship?

No.

No.

Have you been in a relationship?

Yes.

Yes.

In college?

Yes.

Your first love?

Kind of.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's a rough one when it ends.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, my God.

Oh, yeah.

Did you like say, God, why have you forsaken me?

Did you do that kind of thing?

No, I think sometimes you can fall in love with somebody and fall out of love with them.

Oh yeah, it would be different.

You broke up with her.

Yeah.

Just get ready to get dumped, dude.

Oh, I have to.

Trust me.

The first dump, oh, my God.

It's brutal.

You're just fucking Elliot Smith.

It's brutal.

I mean, the last one was.

No one has ever felt pain like this in ever in human history.

Well, I mean,

the bottom line is that it was rough enough that it actually got me to start going to the gym more.

Oh, you're taking me to the best.

I'm trying.

Why?

Because she used to beat you up?

No.

Apart from it.

No.

That would have.

No.

Do she's kicking it.

It's just like, more than anything, I know that I have a lot of work to do on myself, personally.

Yeah, I mean,

your childhood is probably stunted, right?

A little bit, yeah.

You had to grow up.

You're like a child actor, kind of.

Well, not in the way that those conspiracies talk about, but sure.

Not in a crisis actor.

No, but you're like

robbed of a childhood, right?

Yeah.

I mean, there's a lot of notoriety and all kinds of weird shit.

Like I couldn't go to party.

You couldn't grow up from drinking too much or like, you know, like.

Yeah.

I mean I couldn't go to parties in college when I started as a freshman because they'd see you because people would start filming me when I was there.

It was so stressful.

Yeah.

And I eventually got over it.

Once I turned 21, like I was fine, you know, drinking and stuff.

But yeah, yeah, it's...

I'm a pretty weird person in terms of all the random shit that I've gone through.

I wouldn't say

don't hate on your own ass.

Well, I think it's weird.

It's just like you've had a unique road.

But guess what, brother?

I'm 38.

Let me OG you.

It's going to make you tough, brother.

Yeah.

I think so.

Yeah.

Your parents moved to DC, the whole family?

They ended up moving to DC for a time.

That is kind of child actor style, though, right?

I mean, our house got swatted.

And my sister was really struggling because she went through the shooting as a freshman.

So the family ended up moving to D.C.

and my sister finished high school up there.

But DC is so you can get in the game, right?

A little bit?

No, it was just up.

There was a really good high school for my sister to go to up there.

Sidwell?

No, it was not Sidwell.

It was called Georgetown Day School.

All right.

And

Jesuit.

I don't.

Well, it's not actually associated with Georgetown, but she did end up going to Georgetown.

Oh, sweet.

Yeah.

But I went to GW.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

Wow.

I was thinking of DC by the end.

Yeah, it can be a lot.

Oh, it's just, they're so ugly there.

And the people are so, I think they're great.

It's crazy.

What's great about you?

It's crazy that you say that because I had the exact same thought when I first got to New York City this week.

I was like looking around.

I was like, this looks, the people here look so much different from DC.

Like the adage that DC is just Hollywood for ugly people is 100% true.

Why do we let those people tell us what's

you want to change the Democratic Party is you want more like tens?

No, that's not what I'm getting.

You got to get some more tens in there.

No.

I think we need some top-tier performers in terms of being able to actions.

No.

No, no, no.

No.

No.

What we're working on.

I mean, Zoron is genuinely, that's a handsome guy.

I mean, there was hot girls for Zoron, right?

Well, no, I'm talking about the guy, Zoron.

I don't care about these girls.

I'm talking about how great this guy looks.

Well, yeah, but he looks phenomenal.

He's a handsome, charismatic guy.

Yeah.

It's like, why wouldn't they want a handsome, charismatic, good speaker in the the party?

Well, you know, I think some of the things I know I would

do.

I think it's because he actually represents something that is real, right?

That he is saying what voters have been wanting for a long time, especially younger people have been wanting for a long time.

Younger men have been wanting for a long time.

He got 85% of the people.

We want him in that election.

I've been wanting him for a long time.

But the thing is, he had a clear message, and it wasn't just a bunch of bullshit talking points where it's like, oh, we're going to lower prices.

Like, sure, he's on TikTok.

But the thing is, Andrew Cuomo could have been on TikTok.

The only difference would have been is that he would have lost by even more.

Sure.

Oh, wait, TikTok's would have been sick.

The reason why.

I'm doing a dance.

Right.

Something like

Israel.

Yeah.

I'm doing the nay, nay, for Israel.

Right.

The bottom line is, when he was on TikTok, he actually said something, right?

And gave something.

Yeah, he gave something for young people to actually believe in, a vision to believe in.

I think a lot of Democrats have not.

And then he was also obviously extremely and rightfully so vocally critical of the state of Israel.

And

I thought that was overstated.

I think people were like,

they made, it was a, they were being racist to him because he's Muslim.

And

they wanted to make him into Osama bin Laden, and he's really just a rapper that went to Bowden.

What I think is really admirable is despite all of that hatred, he ran a ruthlessly positive campaign, right?

Where I would say, like, if you look, when Fox News covers him, it's actually hard for them to find photos of him where he's not smiling.

Do you know how hard that is, Adam?

I don't know.

Like, it is quite difficult.

Really?

Yes, because they'll find anything.

But even when they put up photos of him, he's always smiling at them.

Do they put frowning pictures of Democrats typically?

Yeah, it's like them being upset or, you know, just whatever makes them look the worst way possible.

Of course.

They're like looking fat.

But when I was with Zoron, we went to Washington Square Park together

in the final weeks of the campaign.

And look, I've worked around

lots of young, on different campaigns with younger candidates and everything like that.

So that's what we do at Leaders.

We deserve.

We help to elect young people, state legislatures and Congress and sometimes mayor.

And the reason why we do that is because we want young people to actually believe that they can be represented, that our issues, whether it's affordability or addressing all...

all kinds of things like the obviously fucked up shit that is happening that Israel is doing right now and the genocide that they are committing against Palestinians.

But what does that have to do with

New York?

I think that that's one of the annoying things that everyone's like, will you go to Jerusalem?

And then it's like, it's so weird.

The way it tracks wasn't that it wasn't that Zoran didn't win because he was speaking out against Israel.

He won because people thought, A, he won the Jewish vote.

He won because it was, people were like, this is weird.

Why are people talking about this?

Cuomo like used it to attack him.

Yep.

And then they tried to like present New York City as like a like an anti-Semitic hellscape when we all live here.

And it's like, what do you, it's New York City.

Like like this with

we live in Seinfeld, like what do they think?

They think it's not the fucking Warsaw Ghetto.

So it wasn't like that, that was just like an attack on him more so because, like, he was like a he been part of like activism in the past.

But in reality, he

just on a surface level, this is a

well articulate, charismatic, and young, and handsome guy that seemed chill.

like and like uh the aversion really seems to like the guys that are like there that are like i'm gonna just i'm gonna invest heavy in like the military industrial complex before i appropriate a weapons package right it's bullshit you know they just don't want to

they just don't want to stop like being there like appropriating weapons

of course not and like they're like yeah they're guys that like have been there for 80 years and they're like make mad they're kind of stealing and they're kind of like entrenched in like their position they're like they they see like a young talent and they're scared.

They want to knife him.

Yeah, because he is an inherent threat to them because he is calling them out on their bullshit and actually saying something he believes in.

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The problem is, is like, how does a party that, when 6% of the people think that what's happening in Gaza is a genocide, in the Democratic Party, I believe

is not a genocide.

Oh, right.

Yeah, yeah.

I was about to say that.

Maybe

6% are in favor of what's happening in Gaza in the Democratic Party.

I mean, Biden appropriated those funds.

How does the party look like when, like, basically, we're seeing people rounded up by like Gestapo force right now?

And we're writing fucking strongly worded letters?

We basically

respond.

No, it was a tiny program in the DHS, and Obama basically just

blew it up.

Blew it up.

And, like, how does it look like when deportations under Biden were pretty much on par with the first term of Trump?

Like, consistently, the things that matter to the constituents of the Democratic Party are just completely

ignored.

It's really difficult, I think, a difficult position to be put in.

And like the question for you, and like we can parlay this into your experience with the

vice chair of the DNC, is it salvageable?

Is the Democratic Party salvageable?

An institution that literally wanted to fuck you off for trying to make any changes.

I mean, I think the bottom line is with the way that our government is structured, and trust me, Adam, this is not a question I take lightly.

This is not something that I'm just saying because it's like, oh, like this is just the way things are.

Just structurally speaking, the way our government is set up, we're probably always going to have some kind of two-party system in one way, shape, or form.

And I know that sounds like a really boring and academic answer.

I know.

But

what I, sorry.

Who's that, your agent?

No, it's...

Sex in the City 3.

It is a...

It's a state senator.

You're going to play Mr.

Who is it, state senator?

It's a great state senator.

You want to hit him up?

Let's talk to him.

Zainab Mohammed.

From here, New York?

No, they're from Minnesota.

Minnesota.

They actually represent the district that just went through the school shooting, unfortunately, in Minneapolis.

So she's calling me about that, so I'm not.

You're the guy that gets a call every shooting?

God, your life sucks.

Well, I try to help people after that.

I know, it's horrible, but

you just have to relive the past over and over again.

I know that's getting us off track.

No, but I'd love to hear it.

The way that I see this right now, Adam, is the best way to beat them is to actually, to win, is to defeat them.

And that's what we try to do with leaders we deserve.

We're trying to find the best young people.

Like there's lots of young people who suck.

But the bottom line is we,

what I saw in the case of somebody like Maxwell Frost in his race,

I hired Maxwell from my dorm room right before COVID actually to work at March for Our Lives.

Maxwell then called me a few years later and told me he wanted to run for Congress.

He was 24.

And he wasn't the best person in that race just because he was young.

He was the best person in that race because he had a decade of experience fighting against gun violence, working for the ACLU, doing all these different forms of activism.

And his opponents, his two main opponents were somebody who committed tax fraud while in Congress as a Democrat, and the other was a hedge fund manager who was a Democrat in Congress while being a hedge fund manager at the same time.

Maxwell had to Uber drive from 9 p.m.

to 2 a.m.

Yeah, he was homeless.

Every night.

He was exactly.

And there's so many young people like that that have that grit, that have that will, that have that determination, who don't want to support, you know, all kinds of the awful things that we're talking about happening that the party is supporting.

Frankly, many times the only good politician is a scared one, specifically one that is scared of losing their job.

And if the government is not going to change our gun laws, if they're not going to address what is happening

with whether it's what's going on between

with Israel or what's happening with the climate crisis or the fact that we have a we are a military welfare state that is feeding a private prison industrial complex through our broken immigration system right now, where there is literally a multi-billion dollar incentive to not fix that system.

If our government doesn't change that from the pressure on the outside, we'll just outlive who is in government and change who is in government by getting these young people elected.

That actually do stand for something, hopefully.

And it's not.

These motherfuckers live, though.

They do.

Some of them, I don't know how they, they look like Emperor Palpatine.

But that's the crazy thing, Adam.

They'll say like, oh my God, experience is so important.

It matters so much.

It's like, if experience actually was so important

and helped us so much, I wouldn't be talking to you right now because we wouldn't be in the crisis that we are in with one of the oldest Congresses we have ever had.

In Congress right now, do you know how many people are under the age of 30 there?

There's Max.

That's it.

He is the only member of Congress under 30.

That's got to be the wackest hang ever.

Absolutely.

He's got to chill with these fucking people.

Right.

Can you imagine how bad the breath is?

And that's what we're trying to do with leaders we deserve, is change who is in government by bringing in a substantial amount amount of funding to get behind them to elect people like there's a state senator in Texas who we elected last year by 62 votes.

We gave her $300,000 to support her campaign.

She doesn't take corporate money.

Her name's Molly Cook.

And she defeated a different Democrat who voted not only to arm teachers while in the state legislature, but voted to give them $25,000 for being armed.

Give him a check and a gun?

Yes.

That's what he tried to do.

Just in the abstract, you said that.

I'm like, that's kind of

just like, it sounds like crazy.

when like Jason Bourne opens like a box and he's got eight passports and there's $25,000 in a gun.

It's like he's a teacher now.

The teacher would be like, oh, it's like Jason Bourne.

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The point that I'm getting at is that when it comes down to it, we can have a party that fights just as hard as Republicans.

But I do have to say, we are playing on an uneven playing field right now where they have taken over the courts.

Where when Biden did try to do a lot of really progressive things, all of a sudden, injunctions were issued, and we couldn't do anything, right?

Trump comes into power, and then the Supreme Court is like, actually, those injunctions, they don't really matter anymore when they're done against Donald Trump.

So, it is to say we absolutely do need to do better as a party, and we have to get better at fighting, but there are increasingly structural factors that make it way harder for us to fight back, and we need to address those at the same time.

And it's hard.

It is incredibly fucking hard.

It is incredibly fucking depressing.

And it's hard to do this.

They hurt you.

Some of them do, certainly, but I'm fine with that.

What's your approval rating in in Democrat DC?

Probably 3%.

Jesus Christ, bro.

Yeah.

But you're going to cook them?

I think I'm going to outlive them.

Dah.

Because I'm 25.

You don't smoke cigs?

No.

But stress is a killer.

You're mad stressed, I can tell you.

No, I'm going to the gym.

Yeah, but you're stressed.

I'm stressed, but it's a productive stress.

Yeah.

There's a reason.

Did you meditate?

I have, yeah.

You have?

Yeah.

I don't have the patience.

I don't meditate as much.

I get a lot of my meditation through running to some extent.

Do you watch movies?

Yes, I've been watching one of the movies I've been watching a lot since the breakup is Goodwill Hunting, actually.

How about them apples?

Yeah, exactly.

Because you were a janitor when you were there?

Hilarious.

Yeah, I know it's ironic that.

Hilarious is hooked my ass.

Yeah.

Are you guys friends?

Oh, you dumped her.

You fell out of love with her?

No, I was dumped.

You got dumped, but you said you fell out of love with her.

Well, no, that's a different girl.

Oh, you just got dumped?

Oh, yeah.

How recently?

Oh, like two months ago or something.

Oh my God, you're in it right now.

You're trying to save the Democrats?

I know.

Bro,

I just like throwing challenges on top of challenges.

Oh, my God.

Oh my God, what are you doing?

I guess it's like you doing the interviews in the middle of the thing.

You're saving the Democrats in the middle of this hell.

Adam, I don't know if I'm necessarily saving the Democrats.

I'm trying to do my part.

Well, you're being a net positive.

I'm trying to fucking help, man.

This shit sucks.

What albums are you listening to post-break up?

What albums am I listening to?

Can I give you a playlist that I have called Please?

Oh, yeah.

I have a playlist from.

I have one that is.

Never mind.

What?

Just tell me, bro.

I have one that's even more depressing and cringe than that.

Everyone's calling you a fucking 75-year-old Soros-funded actor.

Tell them about the songs you're listening to.

Okay,

fine.

Be a human being.

I've been listening to

there's a song called Wicked Wicked Game that's very good Chris Isaac.

That's a horny ass song.

And then what?

You're listening to sex songs post-breakup?

Well, you know what the song's actually about, right?

Have you listened to the lyrics?

No, it's

literally.

I feel like he's like,

I'm watching someone having sex listening to that song.

Well.

Wonderful.

That's a great imitation.

Have you seen the video?

They're like on the beach.

Oh, black and white?

Yeah.

Well, I probably should.

Go watch the the video.

That's a song for me.

Yeah, stop listening to that song.

They're better.

Let me play you some.

Okay.

I'll play you some songs.

Do you know?

Have you ever heard?

Let me see.

Do you want me to pull out the?

Yeah, let me see your Spotify post breakup, dude.

Was she in politics?

Kind of.

You can't date someone in the game, dude.

Well, she wasn't officially in politics.

What was she doing?

She did a lot of advocacy-related work.

But not.

Yeah, you can't date somebody in Hollywood, too.

No.

So I've been...

Hold on.

Can I give you a little note?

Please.

This is so lovely.

This is so adorable.

Like when you're saying that I was good at talking on the news before, like, and that's why I was good at doing the advocacy, you don't have to explain that to these fucking, these fucking, what, why did I say fucking, to these fucking losers?

They are that.

I'll say that much.

It sounds like you are a 45-year-old Soros-funded actor.

Just say, like, listen, dude, some kids got killed in my school.

I'm trying to get it.

I was fucking mad.

It's not that fucking fucking.

It's like I did debate.

Just be like, fuck you, you fucking pig.

Yeah.

I feel like you're getting tough.

I'm going to train you up.

Yeah, we should argue you.

We should hit the gym together out of the game.

I'm not going to the gym, dude.

I have a girlfriend.

Well, if that changes, then you can come to the gym.

I don't get fashion muscles, dude.

Have you heard Walk On By?

Walk on By now.

Isaac Hayes, put that on the playlist.

Okay.

Put on

I Fall to Pieces,

Patsy Klein.

Standing in the Doorway, Bob Dylan.

Oh, that's a good one.

Do you know from, that's my favorite Dylan record?

Really?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm out of mind.

You know what one of my crying Roy Orbison?

Oh,

you still have this playlist?

Yeah, I mean, it's I had Apple Music.

Chelsea Hotel 2.

Nice.

Leonard Cohen?

Leonard Cohen.

You want to hear this?

This is a funny line.

I remember you were.

Wait, you got to hear this.

Paint us the setting, Adam.

Where are you?

You're crying listening to this, presumably.

Come here, bro.

Where was I?

I

in bed.

Damn.

Okay, you didn't just hear this, dude.

We're talking so bravely.

Brave and so sweet.

Wait.

Giving me an all of you.

Okay.

Okay.

Do you know who that song he's singing about is?

It's funny.

No.

Do you know who it's about?

It's about Janice Choplin.

What?

She's about her secondest dick at the Chelsea Hotel.

And they wrote the most beautiful song ever.

We don't have to put that in the episode.

We need you to save the Democrats.

Can we go in, because I think we alluded to it, but I think it's important for you to get this out.

About what happened to the DNC.

About you, yeah, running for the vice chair of the DNC.

Yeah, man.

And then your experience, and then, you know, where that leaves us right now.

Totally to you.

Yeah, I mean, look, the bottom line is that I wanted to,

I was, as part of the campaign,

when I was on, there's this thing called the National Finance Committee, which is basically for all the people.

No one knows that.

I didn't know it existed until

the election.

Because I was helping them raise money and I wanted, because we obviously needed to strengthen gun laws and everything like that and

had to defeat Donald Trump.

They crushed that one.

Totally.

Yeah.

God.

They ran Mr.

Magoo for a bit.

God.

And then we...

I heard behind closed doors.

He's actually like, he's like Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Who?

Of the former president, Joseph Robinette.

Dude, when I met with him, he was fucking on it.

I'll say that much.

Like, I talked to him for an hour.

Why did he do that?

Why was it like that?

Because the sun went down.

Dude, I mean, it could have been.

People, it was like a year and a half before the election.

It was very for America, dude.

America looked like crap.

Well, I mean,

dude, we said during

the whole world is going to see this.

They're going to be laughing at us.

The reason why I ended up running for vice chair was because I got tired of just saying to people like hey we're losing young people we need to do something about this and then getting texts back from the fucking consultants on the campaign being like here you go saying this stupid shit again

and then we saw what happened right and it's not to say like i have the full answer on how to win back young people i don't but i know enough to know that this is not the right fucking answer yeah right and so you were elected though as a vice chair i'm getting to that okay yeah um So I decided to run for it, not because I was like, oh yeah, like I'm going to win this thing.

I ran for it because I wanted to be on stage in the most like insular group of Democrats possible to say to them to their faces, not what they wanted to hear, but what they needed to hear.

So that when they asked,

why did we lose the election, I could say, why did we lose the election?

Because we heard from voters more than anything two things.

Joe Biden is too old and prices are too high.

And with the power of $2 billion behind us, we said, no, he's not.

Then yes, he is.

And no, we're not going to have a primary.

And then, when we heard that prices were too high, we we said, no, look at the stock market.

Look at this.

Look at that.

You're wrong.

If you tell voters not to believe their goddamn eyeballs or wallets and you don't provide them a vision other than like, let's just keep everything the same, you are going to lose them.

And that's.

That's why they didn't say, like, you like, women lost abortion because of Trump.

And part of what I.

It's a pretty simple one to say.

Like, it's half of the people.

Right.

And so I ran for the position and I called, you have to call the 450 or so DNC members basically non-stop for like two or three months

to earn their support.

Sucks.

It's not great.

And

as I was doing that,

I ended up getting enough votes in order to win, and the election happened.

But the challenge that ended up happening.

Who are these people, by the way?

DNC members.

So it's people that are like your

state chapters.

They're kind of.

So 75 of them are appointed by the chair of the DNC.

So like it's just whoever the chair wants them to be.

And then.

I'm bored already.

I know.

Hey, US, not me.

And then a bunch of them are like party activists,

state party chairs, vice chairs, et cetera.

And

when I ran for the position, I read the bylaws.

And the bylaws of the DNC, 10 out of 10 do not recommend reading unless you want to fall asleep,

are they say that you can't be involved in primaries for president, but they say nothing about being involved for primaries in general, right?

And then, because I was thinking to myself, because I was running Leaders We Deserve, we're a PAC and super PAC that does get involved in Democratic primaries.

I talked about our work in primaries when I was running, because you do all these different town halls and things like that.

And I also looked back at people who had been vice chairs before, like Gretchen Whitmer and Tammy Duckworth, who have

PACs that were vice chairs and gave to people from their PACs while being vice chairs.

So in that position, Adam, when nobody asks you about like, well, you have a PAC, how is this going to work or anything like that?

And it's not in the bylaws and there's a precedent for this, you think that you would think that it's going to be fine.

So they

I was so stupid, dude.

They said you were breaking the rules?

So, no.

But they try to make up a rule that you were breaking.

So what ended up happening was at our first DNC meeting,

Ken Martin hands out, like they hand out this

pledge, this neutrality pledge to say, you are not going to be involved in any primaries at all in any way, shape, or form.

That is not in the bylaws.

And

I said to them, I cannot sign this because we do get involved in primaries with leaders we deserve.

My job is I run a PAC and Super PAC that helps elect young Democrats, young progressive Democrats that

are running for state legislature and Congress and mayors sometimes.

And I told them, look, I'm fine with not being involved in presidential primary because that is what the DNC really manages more than anything.

is the presidential primary.

And I was given the option that I could either not do this work that, because we announced this effort to spend millions of dollars challenging incumbent Democrats that we feel like are failing to meet the moment in safer seats that don't risk us losing the House at all.

And they said, look, you have basically two options here.

You can either keep your job, because the vice chair role is completely voluntary, completely.

It's a volunteer role.

You can either keep your job running leaders we deserve and not be a vice chair and be involved in whatever primaries you want, or

you can remain a vice chair, effectively,

but you can't do anything regarding primaries at all.

You can't fundraise, you can't work on them.

So that would mean I would just have to collect a check for 18 months, basically, doing nothing for leaders we deserve and not be able to fundraise for it so that I could have some basically bullshit ceremonial role at the DMC.

But like, that's not why they got you out.

And

what they ended up saying was that's what they came up with, right?

They got you out because you wanted to get establishment people out.

Well, what they ended up coming up with, what they said was,

and I'm very sorry for how boring this is because it's like

a lot of people.

It's been like watching the game.

It's been a ride.

It's like Top Gun Maverick, honestly.

It's like the trilogy.

It's the final component, right?

What trilogy?

It's the third Top Gun.

That's how exciting this is.

I know.

There's been a second one.

This is the third one, because that's how exciting.

Anyways.

Yeah, yeah, I'm moving on.

What happens in the third one?

So what ended up happening here

was

they would have to change the bylaws in order to say nobody can be involved in primaries at all.

And then to remove me, they would need a two-thirds vote to do that.

So in that position, what they ended up doing was saying, actually, there was a procedural issue with the election.

And we're going to redo the election because of our gender balance rule.

at the DNC.

What the fuck are you talking about?

That, yes.

They just didn't like you because you wanted to prioritize it.

I'm telling you, I'm looking at the reason that they gave me.

Yeah, but that reason is.

But then, let me finish this, Adam, and then we'll get to that because I agree with you.

We end up deciding to redo the election, and as that happens, all this stuff with ICE is going down in L.A.

and the Marines and all that crazy shit.

And I think to myself, this is fucking insane.

This is not what we need to be focused on right now.

You know, I got into this position to try to help us

play some role in helping to win back young people.

And I'm not here to have some bullshit title that actually I can't do basically anything in because they just want they don't want young people.

They want fucking young sycophants that want young people who only believe what older people want young people to believe instead of what young people actually believe, what they need.

Right?

Which is not a politics of the pragmatic in this crazy bullshit that we've got caught up in where it's like we're going to keep just writing strongly worded letters to fascists and hope that somehow they get buried under a mountain of those strongly worded letters by November and that's our win.

Yes.

Yes.

Right.

Like please stop with your fascism.

And it's like fucking Jesus Christ, stop, right?

Do they spray perfume on it?

Basically, yeah, I'm sure they do.

And I'm sure they give it a kiss and send it off.

Right?

They wrote it right at a gel panel.

It's insane, though, to act like this is the best that we can do as a party.

And if I have to choose between a ceremonial role and being

and doing what I can to help bring in a generation that for most of our lives has never actually had a real sense of hope in our lives because we haven't really seen somebody who we feel like actually is fighting for what we need just to survive instead of being like, actually, we know you're underwater right now.

What if you were nine feet underwater instead of being 10 feet underwater?

And it's like, fuck you.

I actually want my head above water.

God forbid.

And what it's going to take is electing people who actually believe in something and have a spine to stand for a politics of what we actually need instead of just a bunch of bullshit talking points and fucking strongly worded letters.

That's what we're doing at leaders.

We deserve.

It seems almost as if sometimes like there, the incentive of the Democratic Party is not necessarily to win elections.

Hell no.

It's to protect their own power, Adam.

So if that's your focus, right?

Like

that that runs,

you know, that like

that puts you in opposition to them.

So like most likely like I mean,

you like, yeah, they use some procedural bullshit about like you being involved.

You wanted to fucking primary people that were like part of the problem and then they wanted ken martin wanted you out right right and then he was like you could either work with your with organization or be the co the co-chair of the democratic one of dnc five vice which is like honestly what the fuck would you get done right and it's like even even the smallest things that i brought up i could tell that we were not going to make progress on and i i also brought up in closed door meetings at the dnc i said look when we're talking about young voters because of course like we're doing our whole like they they called an after action report report because there's not an autopsy because we're not dead yet so boring when they're doing that what i brought up is like guys if you're going to talk about young voters i know you don't want to talk about this you have to talk about gaza you do well because democrats don't support the don't support like what's happening in gaza exactly but the thing is inside of dc they don't want to deal with that because you know

in almost all the conversations that I hear from different organizations about congressional campaigns, you know what the three things I hear most are?

You hear healthcare, Gaza, inflation?

No, in terms of how groups inside of DC decide who to support.

Israel,

that's one of them.

Fentanyl, support for fentanyl,

and then yeah, just doing like

going to a satanic blood ritual event.

Yeah, and you forgot, obviously, all the other stuff on top of that.

But what they actually do is

on the lips.

Right.

Yeah.

So gossiping about who's going to be be the congressional representative for Israel, right?

And it's just a constant competition for that.

Federman.

I mean, it's a tough competition.

He's a big boy, that guy.

But the thing I'm getting at out of it is in DC, the three questions I hear most often from different groups that get involved in these campaigns is not like, oh, like, is the candidate actually charismatic enough to like win?

How are they polling?

Right.

Like things you would typically think about.

It is depressingly.

It is extremely depressing how much actual conversation there is about democracy.

Because the three questions that get asked asked most is, what is APAC doing in this race?

What is crypto doing in this race?

And what was their last quarter's fundraising?

And how much cash do they have on hand?

Yeah.

That's all of it.

You don't even get as much money.

We do.

We need to get money because we don't take money.

There was somebody who called me after we supported Zoron.

He's like, I was going to give you the substantial amount of money that he had pledged previously.

And he's like, I'm not doing that anymore.

Because you guys supported Zoron and I don't agree with him on Israel.

But because we have so many small dollar donors, I got to say, look, man, like, that's you.

We're going to continue doing this work because we're supported by 220,000 individual people around the country who support us because our candidates, they don't take corporate money.

We don't take corporate money.

And we have to make sure that we have the independence to be able to actually create the change that we need.

And it's fucking hard.

It's incredibly hard.

But what I need from people that are listening to this, if they take nothing else, is to consider running for office.

Because this is not...

Not these guys.

You don't want people to do that.

I mean, honestly, some of them could.

Because I'll tell you this much.

These guys in DC are not actually that fucking smart.

Yeah.

You can outwit them.

They run for the Xbox party.

Okay, but the bottom line is, I don't think any single person is coming to save us.

I don't think I can save us.

I don't think you can save us.

I don't think any single person can, right?

But, I mean, maybe you can, Adam.

I don't know.

But I think all of us as a generation, things are incredibly fucked, right?

We know that.

And it's easy to talk about, oh, this is all the fucked up shit that's happening.

This is how wrong it is.

We have to figure out how in the future, for the next generation, Does this conversation not just continue happening over and over again?

Because we became the leaders that we needed but had far too few of growing up.

People who actually stand for something and create real change instead of becoming younger versions of who currently is there and is 80 or 70 years old.

I think we'll end on that, but like what are the major points that you're going to push for your candidates in the midterms as a litmus test for their election?

Well, for one, it's obviously for me, it's not taking corporate money, it's being good on guns.

It's also making sure that they have a stance that is actually in line with the American people and voters of what they want to happen with the situation that's going on with Israel, right?

And actually saying, you know, maybe we shouldn't be giving billions of dollars to a country that says, like, oh, no, there's not a famine that we're complicit in and fucking starving people and slapping them on the goddamn wrist and acting like there isn't anything that we can do.

It's just ridiculous that we are getting pushed around by them when we're the very people that are arming them in the first place.

If the United States wanted to,

they could stop this absolutely, and it's fucking bullshit.

It is total bullshit.

And we have to get better people elected in the first place.

And the thing that we need to ask ourselves is, how do we make sure as a generation that we do not replicate the spinelessness that got us here and build the power that we need to actually achieve what we want?

Because in politics, unfortunately, you can only get, you know, if you want 100% of what you want, you need 100% of the power.

You can't do that in a democracy.

You can get 90% potentially, 80%.

We have to figure out how to get to that 80%.

And instead of just saying like, well, like, this is the right thing to happen.

Yeah, it is the right fucking thing to happen, right?

Or this is the wrong thing to happen.

We need to change that.

Regardless of whether it's the NRA, APAC, or these other groups, we need to be able to take them on.

But we need to build the real power on the left to ensure that we are voting in line with what the American people want and what Democrats, actual Democrats, not the idiots in DC that want to just say like, oh, this is what they really believe in.

What Democrats and young people actually believe in.

Because we saw that in Zoron's race and the power of it, right?

He was not supposed to win that race.

If it was a traditional electorate, he would not have won.

But because he said what he actually believed in, regardless of whether or not somebody agrees with him, at least you fucking know what he believes in.

Right?

Cuomo started to change the stance more after the primary and all kinds of issues because he's just trying to get elected and he's spineless.

We need people with actual spines and they need the power.

And talent too.

And the talent.

You can have a guy with a spine that's just like annoying.

right like you need a guy that's like zoron gives good speeches and he's like he's

chill yeah it's like a normal thing right i mean not to tell you how to do your job no it's real that's it that's what we're trying to do i gotta send you this playlist you absolutely do you're in the you're in a dark one right now i mean how much time are you spending in bed not enough the bed is oh not enough because i'm going to the gym a lot you're going gym mode yeah oh you're he's gonna be red pilled like two two months yeah he is he's gonna be listening yeah he's you're gonna be tape he's gonna be he's going tape mode.

No,

or you know what you could do instead of going to the gym?

Move to New York City, dude.

I seriously thought about it.

Skinny, you don't have to go to the gym at all.

Girls love it.

I mean, it's a hack.

What it is, it's women are brainwashed by the film Andy Hall into thinking it's acceptable

to like Data Rumpels still skinny kind of guy.

It's been great for a while, but I think it's starting to change, and I need to change with the times too.

I can't look like I'm one cigarette away from death anymore.

Dude, I know.

I'm going to see you talking about high-value men pretty soon.

I'm going to see you.

Thanks a lot, man.

Yeah, so much though.

Good luck.

Give it up for

you.

You have fun?

Let's be real.

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