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Ruth Bader Ginsburg, am I correct in remembering this?

She said she didn't want to retire because she wanted a female president to replace her.

I don't remember that.

Maybe there were reports that she said that behind the scenes.

Yeah, how little was she?

I mean, we don't hang out with the Supreme Court.

But you see her at the State of the Union.

I mean, she's got young people.

But I wasn't like measuring.

I wasn't like.

She was like 3'5, maybe?

3'6.

She's 3'5.

That's what it looked like.

She's taller.

I hated those t-shirts, though.

Oh, they're still out there.

The notorious RBG.

Yeah.

What the hell are they talking about?

She's just some blade.

It is true, like a lapper.

Hello, and welcome to the Adam Friedland Show, guys.

Adam Friedland here.

Of course, I want to thank our members here on youtube.com.

This show may very well turn be a profitable enterprise

any day now.

If you want to support the show, support what's happening on the show, if you're a fan of the show and you want to get the show early, you can sign up in the link in the description below or by clicking join at the top of your page here on youtube.com.

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If you prefer supporting the show through Patreon, there's a link in the description.

Also, if you want to shop our merch, the hats will be restocked very soon.

We have t-shirts up on our site and coming very soon for fall, for layering season, we have hoodies coming up and they look fucking sick.

So I'll let you know when those are out.

AdamFriedland.show if you want to shop our merch.

My guest this week is United States Senator from Connecticut, Chris Murphy.

Murphy's made a name for himself in the Democratic Party as an outspoken advocate against Donald Trump during his second term.

Now, I know what you're thinking.

Connecticut, seriously,

the 48th largest state, like big whoop, you know?

And folks, I'd be lying if I didn't have many of these prejudices in my own heart at various points in my life.

I thought people from Connecticut were drunks, Neanderthals, criminals.

We all know the saying, you know, watch your wallet, here comes a connected.

We've all heard the joke.

You know, should I say, I don't want to.

Okay, I'll say that.

You know the joke.

What do you call a man from Connecticut with a sheep under one arm and a goat under the other arm a bisexual?

It's not funny.

But I implore you, dear viewer, not to look down on Senator Murphy just because where he's from.

My conversation with Senator Murphy taught me an important lesson about the power of dialogue, and hopefully it does the same for you guys as well.

Connecticut holds an important place in history and culture.

For instance, it was the site of the world's first helicopter and the world's first hamburger, and of course, the world's first condom, which was made out of sheep intestine.

And of course, people not from Connecticut improved upon it by taking the intestine out of the sheep first.

So, guys, please enjoy my conversation with Chris Murphy.

This guy

is from Connecticut.

Might be the president one day.

It would be good for the show.

If you want to be the president, come on the show.

Ladies and gentlemen, senator from the great state of Connecticut, okay state of Connecticut, Chris Murphy, everyone.

Hey, everybody.

Hi.

Yeah, clap, please.

Everybody.

Hi, thanks.

I walked out a little early.

It's been constant disrespect since this guy came here.

And I want to know if it was like inspired by Dick Gavin or a direct reproduction.

It's really, it's ridiculous that this is my job, but it's really awesome.

It is.

It's fantastic.

I mean, it's kind of, does it feel demeaning for you?

Do you feel like how this is a new part of the job?

This is a new part of the job.

Yeah, you have to show your personality and authenticity, right?

Yeah, like

we gotta be a real person.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, it used to be that, like, you know, you could just do like two cable shows.

Yeah.

Maybe if you were a big deal, you'd show up on late night TV.

And now, you know, now you have to talk about you used to do a show called Come Town.

Right.

Yeah.

So did you used to be, you were, you used to be from the Red Onion Capital of America.

Yeah, yeah, that's right.

So we both both have a checkered past.

Connecticut, I know it's your home state.

I know you're going to, listen, you love your state.

Yeah.

But it's a little bit bullshit.

It's a little bit bullshit to me.

Just because you sort of view it as being the obstacle between Boston and New York?

The drive, the trap.

I've never not had traffic.

Yeah,

but it's a popular place.

I mean, no.

Places that no one wants to be don't have traffic.

I understand.

It's not like a real fucking city over here in New York.

No.

I mean, first of all, it has the Jersey thing where it's like either the it's either New York or New New England, Boston, right?

Yeah, like we're both tri-state

and we're New England.

Was the Red Onion place, was that a New York zone or was that New England zone?

New England zone.

So like I grew up, Wethersfield, Connecticut is like a Hartford area, so I grew up in the center of the state.

So you so you're socks

Your socks Celtics?

I'm socks Celtics, but New York Giants.

So why why not Patriots?

Well I respect that.

Yeah, I rooted for whoever my father rooted for when he was growing up.

Patriots didn't exist.

So if you were growing up in Central Connecticut, you were Boston fans, but for football, you were New York.

So yeah, I've got both New York and Boston.

Wait, your colleague

was from the New York side, the other senator from New York.

Blumenthal?

Blumenthal.

So do you guys kind of have like a, you guys cover different sides of the state?

I mean, you don't really need to.

He covers the insider and trading side.

The state's like that big.

You don't really need some, You don't need to divvy it up in half.

So Blumenthal is like one of these relentless politicians who goes to everything.

He works like Saturdays, Sundays.

in some ways

he does the job for both of us.

Really?

So you don't have to do crap?

You do your hot dog tour of Connecticut.

I do my hot dog tour of Connecticut.

But that's personal.

I was mean to you guys on that call.

Can I apologize real quick?

I mean, it was...

They told me that

you were not impressed by the hot dog tour and that you weren't going to bring it up.

I said, like,

I was like, you know, like, I've been doing a lot of research.

I was like, does he play guitar?

Like, is there anything?

And they're like, listen.

He does a hot dog tour, and I think framing him as a hot dog aficionado might be.

It's super embarrassing that that was like the go-to.

And I'm like, I feel actively depressed after hearing about it.

Yeah,

that that's what makes me interested.

And listen, you guys are professionals.

I don't, like, and I just want to, I want to take accountability for that, but that was one of the worst things I've ever heard.

It's not a reflection on them.

It's a reflection on they have like very, no, they have like very little material to work with.

You got the whole boss.

You're a Bruce Hornsby fan?

Yes.

Yeah, you took your staff to Bruce Hornsby?

I'm going to take them to Bruce Hornsby.

He's playing in

D.C.

next week.

None of them know who he is, I asked.

No, nobody knows.

And actually, if you, like, I sort of assume that everybody knows his signature song, the way

the way it is.

Boys, what were we listening to before you came here?

But like, no.

What were we listening to?

Yeah.

Bruce Hornsby.

Yeah.

Fewer people know even one of Bruce Hornsby's songs.

Well, he played the dead, right?

Yeah, he toured of the dead for like 10 years.

And he does like really kind of like interesting avant-garde stuff now.

I mean, he tickles them damn.

He does tickle the ivory.

Yeah.

He's a great pianist.

Here's what I got on you.

Hot dog aficionado.

He likes walking around and Bruce Hornsby.

It sounds like...

He's walking around.

I think that's...

As a fact pattern, that's the BTK killer.

We got to do like, I don't know, you got to get a tattoo, a snake.

I don't know.

I walk across the state from one end to the other.

I don't just enjoy walking around.

Oh, they made it sound like you were some sort of hobo searching through trash like a raccoon.

There was a guy, and I don't remember when it was, but like 100 years ago in China.

Johnny Apples.

In Connecticut, no, called the Leather Man.

And he dressed in full, complete leather, head to toe, and walked the state nonstop continuously.

And so you would get really excited when you heard rumors of the leather man showing up to your town.

And like people would rush down to see him.

You know in New York they have a couple like nightclubs

for leather guys.

It would be much more interesting.

My walk across Connecticut would be much more interesting.

So like growing up in the red, the red onion, red onion town, is a market pride.

I saw the mascot you guys have.

Do we have a red onion mascot?

Oh my God.

You don't even know about your own place, dude.

I mean, I grew up there.

I haven't lived there for a long time.

So you went to public high schools growing up?

Yep.

What was your vibe like growing up?

Like, you were a cool guy?

You got girlfriends?

No, I would be.

I'm who you would expect I would be.

I was president, president of the class.

Yeah.

Started a Young Democrats club when I was 16 years old.

I know.

I would know.

I was like, listen, I was like the, I was a born organizer, right?

So like I organized the, you know, touch football games in the neighborhood, and I, you know, organized the student protests against the dress code.

So like, that's just who I was.

Radical.

It wasn't much of a dress code.

It was just that

we couldn't wear baseball.

Oh, yeah.

And you took it to the van?

Yeah, yeah.

You fought all the way to the top?

Yeah, yeah.

It was

justice.

You were elected at 29 to the state Senate?

No, I was 20.

I was 25.

25.

I was elected to this, to the state legislature.

So you just never had fun.

Yeah, I mean, I've been doing this since I was, yeah, since I'm an adult.

It's a weird, yeah, it's definitely a strange life, right, to live like your entire life in elective politics.

I mean, I wasn't really in the public eye when I was a state legislator, but yet

it kind of fucks with you to do this job and

only this job.

It's kind of like a pejorative these days, right?

Career politician.

The Republicans like to say that having experience, that means you're bad.

No, when I first ran for the Senate, I mean, that was the primary knock on me that I hadn't, you know, I was a lawyer and I practiced law against Linda McMahon.

Having experience and having talent should be something that's celebrated

for a position, like

in any career field.

And these days it's like, we need like private equity evil business thing that makes you better than someone that's like knows how to do the job, you know?

Yeah.

And so it's just like,

I think, do you feel like that mirrors like kind of like the

kind of the decay of like trust in like our elected officials or institutions, like it's a bad thing that you like do something for 30 years?

Yeah, I mean I there's not a lot of evidence to people that a democracy is working writ large or that that experience does anything other than bind you to the status quo and to the powerful people in Washington.

So there's a lot of evidence that the longer you stay, the more complicit you become in the project of just enriching the folks at the very top.

But I've always opposed term limits largely because I think it's kind of, you know, just this big act of surrender.

Like you're giving up on democracy.

You're basically saying democracy can't sort out who amongst those who have been there 10 years are good or bad.

And so we're just going to be arbitrary about it why not instead fix the problems with democracy fix the rules so it's a lot easier for somebody to run and we just don't elect telemarketers which is kind of what we're doing now right like you you are someone that has a meltdown at cvs on facebook live about masks

you can be in the you can be in the house of representatives like uh six months later right so if you know how to sort of engage in clickbait politics or you know how to raise money or you're super wealthy yeah those are the three things that can qualify you for office right now.

And maybe we should kind of diagnose that and try to change it.

You ever chill with Marjorie or no?

No, I've never met her.

Yeah, yeah.

The House of Commons.

What if she's like really cool?

What if she's like, you're like, that shake's crazy, but like, she's honestly, she's, she's kind of funny.

Like, I mean, we all had like super crazy friends that we would not necessarily want to represent us in Congress, but were

interesting to hang with.

She's like that guy, yeah, that friend you have in seventh grade who's like pure, like has no attachment to morality, but that makes them like the funniest guy in the world yeah like lots of my friends are totally unqualified to be in public service but super awesome to get a beer with yeah those guys always go into rehab at like 16 right they're they always like uh fall off they're not funny anymore my friend David I'm not this won't go in the episode okay let's talk about David David gave a presentation in class and he like whispered to me he's like I have a boner right now and I'm like, you're

an insane guy.

He's in eighth grade.

And I'm like,

you're a maniac.

And then, then, yes, of course, his parents sent him to emotional problem school three years later.

He really, I don't know where he is.

You were elected to the House.

I saw a campaign ad from your,

do you know which one I'm talking about?

No, I don't.

I don't.

From your first run at the House.

You can be some

old lady?

Yeah, she's been there for Nancy Johnson.

Nancy Johnson.

She's been there for 24 years, longest serving congressperson in the history of Connecticut.

She freaking hated you, too.

She did not like me.

She didn't like you.

Yeah.

Did you see the ad where it's like, you're like,

the fake me you're yeah the fake you and you're like high-fiving a drug dealer yes yeah a white a white guy that's dressed like a black guy yeah she hired an actor to portray me going door to door in which at the final door i'm welcomed in by a drunk by a bunch of drug dealers because i had voted in the state legislature to equalize the penalties for crack and cocaine which meant that i guess i lowered the penalties for crack she kind of made you look cool maybe accidentally yeah the the actor i think was you only saw the back of him but he sort of he projected is better looking Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And you were dapping him, you were like, I'm good.

Yeah.

People.

He looked a guy.

Yeah.

I looked a little dangerous.

Yeah, it's like when I was growing up, I'd hear like a rapper say, like, my Jewish lawyer beat the case for me.

I'd be like, that's, that's right.

We got him off of, he commit a crime.

Made me feel great.

That ad, yeah.

That 12-year-old.

That ad didn't do well for her.

Yeah.

She's passed, probably?

No?

No, no, no, she's still alive.

I just?

Yes.

Nancy?

Nancy Johnson.

Where's she at?

She's living in Connecticut.

I don't know if New Britain, West Hartford, Connecticut.

We got to hit her up.

I ran into her.

I saw her at a church service like a year and a half ago.

You go to the same church?

What's that?

You go to the same church as Nancy?

Well, I was like trying out churches, so I was trying to find

a new church.

And I just happened to be at hers one Sunday morning.

But

she was like a true 1980s era moderate Republican.

She was pro-Choice.

She was pro-environment.

She was a Connecticut Republican.

She's a Connecticut Republican.

And so, like, I don't want to speak for Nancy Johnson, but my impression is that she would be, you know, a classic kind of never-Trump Republican.

There's just, like, no home for her now in the party.

And even back then, increasingly, there was no home for her.

Who's your first enemy in politics?

My first enemy?

Who's the first guy that was like, I'm going to fuck with Murphy?

And you're like, ah,

you don't, you don't.

Well, I mean, the first time I ran for the state legislature, I ran against another guy who had been there for a very long time, and I think he was equally pissed that at the time a 24-year-old had beat him, that he moved out of town, I think, within about 12 months of the race.

Whoa.

He was like a Wild West show.

He had to get out of

here.

Who drove him out?

Angelo Fusco.

Oh, he's an Italian guy.

He is Italian.

Maybe.

With the fishes.

Maybe with the fishes.

I'd never made peace with him.

I never saw him again.

But yeah, he didn't stay in town for a while.

I fucking hate Andrew.

Was there an undercurrent of

ethnic white tension in that?

There's no ethnic undercurrent.

Was there like Lower East Side, kind of Ellis Island?

Zero.

I was almost, I'm supposed to be from Connecticut.

You know that?

How so?

My dip shit ancestor from Lithuania Schettle got literally on the wrong boat.

Was supposed to go to Connecticut.

His eight brothers moved to New Haven and one brother was like, just got off the boat and he was like, where is this New Haven?

And they're like no it's africa you're in africa right now you're in cape town south africa right now and my parents are from cape town and he gave and he gave up he didn't make a second attempt what he can maybe what he can get another boat trip all that way no it must have been crazy actually for those like because they were very uneducated they were like they didn't have color photography they didn't like till like till like i wonder when he realized like you think when he actually got off i think he was like yeah like uh like herschel or yankel or his brother was supposed to meet him at the place.

And he's like, where the fuck is

Africa?

You could have been a kinetic cushion.

All right, so I first,

I think you first came to like national prominence during Sandy Hook.

And I remember in 2013,

you did filibuster.

2016.

2016, sorry.

Right after the pulse shooting.

And gun violence is like, that's a shit fight.

Like, or a gun, like

trying to fucking...

it's you guys got one during biden right you got one thing first yeah we got the first bill in 30 years where it's like 1200 guys now can't or like have to get checked or something what is the what was the bill well no there's like the the bill is like a comprehensive bill it put like 13 billion dollars into mental health and community safety and then it made like five changes in gun laws um all of them small but none of them insignificant i don't one of them closing the boyfriend loophole so if you your boyfriend could get gun No, so if you beat up it used to the law used to be that if you beat up your wife you couldn't get a gun.

Your guns would actually be taken away from you.

But if you abused your girlfriend

you could keep your guns.

So we closed that loophole.

We said that like we said if you're under 21 you have to have a waiting period before you buy an assault weapon.

We should just not sell assault weapons to 18 year olds but at least now we've got a 10 day waiting period.

But it's not a coincidence that since we passed that bill, gun violence has come way down in the country.

So we kind of proved that if you change the laws of the country and you're a little bit more careful about who gets guns, you actually can save lives.

Yeah.

I mean, it's just like...

It's not rocket science.

I looked up the length.

It was 15 hours.

You did your 15 hours.

Oh, the filibuster was 15 hours, right?

Okay.

And

you know what ranking you are.

I mean, I'm going down in the rankings, right?

So I assume am I outside of the top 10 now?

I think you're 10.

Yeah.

How's that feel?

Top 10.

It hurts.

Yeah, but I'm top 10.

Double digits.

Well, so here's what happened happened with the filibuster is that we got what we asked for.

So I had to stop the filibuster because we had a demand.

And normally filibusters are truly performative.

What are the rules?

Yeah, like you can't pee?

You can't.

Well, you can't sit down or leave your desk.

There are rumors that when Strom Thurman...

Was it in a wheelchair?

Well, there were rumors that when he did his filibuster, or first of all, there were no cameras, so who knew what the fuck you were doing in your filibuster?

There were rumors that he was leaving regularly to go to the bathroom and coming back.

He was going racist.

To go to the bathroom and come back.

But no, for mine, I had to stand at the desk for

15 hours.

Would you pee your pants?

I did not pee my pants.

You had to hold it?

Yeah, you got to hold it.

Your adrenaline is running, and your body's telling you, don't pee your pants.

What shoes do you wear?

Regular black shoes.

It wasn't like that.

Yeah, like dress shoes.

Adult shoes?

Dress shoes.

You do like rubber shoes.

But Booker, when he did his,

he wore sneakers, which shoes.

You think that's pussy?

He was kind of cheating.

Yeah, yeah.

yeah, yeah.

He's kind of cheating.

Yeah, like.

Strom Thurmond in a wheelchair.

That's bullshit.

I don't think he was in a wheelchair at the time of his filibuster.

Later in life.

He wasn't.

Because when I saw that he did 24 hours, if it's a wheelchair, it shouldn't be.

Like, it's an asterisk.

No, I agree with that, but I don't think that's actually, but I don't think that's a good idea.

That's a wheelchair.

Yeah, I don't think it's an accurate historical representation.

Okay, so I'm sorry I disrespected the racist filibuster of Strom Thurmond.

I'm glad.

I think thank you for your honor of your.

As a member of the Club of 100, you've done the honorable thing.

It was very moving to be on the floor for Corey's.

To have him stop the record.

Oh, I thought you were just talking about it.

When he broke the record.

So Booker was on the floor for my entire 15 hours.

And so when Corey did his 20-something hour filibuster, I stayed on the floor with him for the whole thing.

Do the Republicans try to distract,

like laser pointer maybe?

No.

They're like, boo.

We're being scared uh it's such a stupid thing that you're describing stand yeah standing and talking you can't for a long time it's literally like you're like a something from survivor where you're trying to get immunity yeah but they like it's the rules of the government yeah but when but when but but so mine again had it mine was not just performative because what i was saying is that i'm not going to sit down and let you move on to any other business until you schedule votes on gun measures.

And the idea was we weren't going to win them, but at least we'd sort of show the the country that Republicans were against common sense things.

One of the things we were demanding was saying that if you're on the terror watch list, like if we think you might be a terrorist, you should not be able to buy a gun.

And so we got Republicans to vote against that,

which is part of what helped unelect at least one of them in the next election.

So that's why I had to stop, was that

the Republican majority said, okay, we'll give you your votes on what you want.

You had to take a shit.

No, I got what I wanted.

I got what I wanted.

Paul Pierce, too, we all know.

In the finals, when he went in the wheelchair, we all know what that was.

He had to go take a picture.

He pooped his pants.

Oh,

he had

a serious injury.

How many times have you met

our president, number 45 and 47?

I met him a handful of times in the first term.

I have not talked to him in the second term.

Is he just Trump?

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, I did a phone call.

Just like on camera, off camera, he's just Trump.

Just Trump.

So I did a 45-minute phone call with him after one of the horrible mass shootings during his first term because he was at that time pretending like he was going to do a bill that changed the gun laws.

Oh, good on that.

And for that 45-minute call,

all he talked about was Rosie O'Donnell.

No, was what the name of the bill was going to be.

All he wanted to talk about was the name of the bill.

Didn't want to talk about the substance of the bill, how it was going to be passed.

All he wanted to talk about for 45 minutes was

the name of the bill.

The name and the bill.

The name of the bill.

So yeah,

he's Trump.

I don't even remember what we came up with.

So you were like, word shopping names with Trump?

Shopping names of the Trump gun control bill.

But it never went any further.

We never went any further than that.

Did he have any good ones?

Do you remember, like, Mr.

President, that's all right?

I don't remember.

I do remember he didn't want gun control to be in the title, which was kind of patently obvious to anybody on the call that's kind of smart.

You're probably not going to put that in the title, but I don't.

I think he liked, oh, I do remember.

I think he liked, he did like the term gun safety.

Yeah.

Trump shot, you know, it's not bad.

Yeah.

but that was it.

Like, that was the sum total of our

name.

Why does the first term, from my perspective, it feels different.

It felt different than this.

I remember during the first term that the terms fascism, you know, Nazi were bandied about.

And,

you know,

the Steele dossier and the Mueller report, like, we were like waiting on like the smoking gun.

And like, you know, Rachel Maddow convinced my dad that Vladimir Putin was trying to kill him.

And like, you know, like, but like, uh, um, it seemed like he was more interested in just going to Buckingham Palace and like going to dinner, doing the sword dance in Saudi Arabia.

He just wanted to like go, like, be treated like he's the best guy.

When COVID broke out, my assumption was like, if he wants to enact fascism, he could

global health crisis, he could just declare martial law to assume absolute power.

Yeah.

And I'm like, I think he's too lazy for fascism.

Yes.

Right.

So what is, in your estimation, I know there there's a Supreme Court decision that has equipped them with the ability to liquidate the civil service.

The guys he had the first time are different than the guys he had the second time.

What's the difference here?

Why does this feel different?

Yeah, so I think that's part of the answer.

But

you're sort of shorthand of this is right.

I mean, he just was not ready.

to do, I think, what was in his gut in the first term, which is to try to seize a whole bunch of power for the executive branch, but he was not surrounded by people who knew how to do that, and he hadn't thought at all about how to do that.

So in the four-year interim, the Republican Party kind of becomes dominated by two underlying dangerous ideas.

One is that democracy is kind of outdated and antiquated.

That becomes kind of a mainstream Republican idea, like you can't keep up with China or Russia with the inefficiency of democracy, so we need something more nimble, like a CEO style.

And then the second idea that becomes mainstream in the Republican Party is that the left, Democrats, are like an existential threat to the country, that America is really a white Christian country and that Democrats who, you know, believe that multiculturalism is our strength are a threat and they need to be disposed with at any cost.

So even if we have to get rid of democracy, which may be what we need to do to keep with China anyway, it doesn't, it's justified if it's what eliminates Democrats and the sort of mainstream left from our politics.

So when he becomes president, you just have a whole bunch of believers that are ready to populate the administration who are actually enthusiastic about the project of destroying democracy for a host of different reasons.

And they put together a plan to do it.

And from day one, they start operationalizing it.

Is that Project 2025?

Yeah, I think, listen, I think Project 2025 is part of it, but I think a lot of their plans you know, were so insidious that they weren't dumb enough to actually write them into Project 2025.

I think they have always envisioned using the DOJ in order to try to hunt and silence their political enemies.

They didn't write that into Project 2025, but that clearly has been part of their plan.

I think because of the Russiagate stuff, my assumption when Project 2025 was coming up during the election, and we were told that this is the most important election ever, and then

we saw that debate performance and we're like, if it's the most important, then why?

The Democrats don't seem to be taking it very seriously.

And so when I heard Project 25, it sounded conspiratorial and it didn't sound like a real thing.

And it took me a while to actually realize

very shortly before the actual election that, oh, this is actually substantive because it's coming from the Heritage Foundation.

And

effectively, the American conservative project has been, I don't know, is this right, but like since Reagan to liquidate elements of the federal government and kind of sell them off to the private sector.

Correct.

And then whatever is left, turn it into essentially mechanisms for enrichment of the corporate crowd and the economic elite crowds.

So, you know, you might not liquidate all the regulatory agencies, but they just get turned into places that continue to flow money and resources to the very powerful.

My assumption was always like,

we can get through whoever's the president because we have a robust civil service.

So there are enough like little old ladies that go to the Department of Health and Human Services.

And like running the vaccine program to make sure that our kids don't die.

And that's why planes don't crash into each other and that's why like America can kind of function if, you know, if Bush is the president or Obama's the president or Trump's the president the first time.

What is Doge now after Elon's gone?

Have there been more liquidations of of,

you know, like departments in the executive branch?

Or, I mean, I remember hearing that they were going to give it to a palantir is that what happened like well they don't hear about that the fine no the yeah I think you're right you don't hear about it as much because you don't have a celebrity running the process of terminating public employees, but they are still laying people off at HHS, for instance, and at NIH, there continue to be mass layoffs.

A lot of it stopped because the courts stepped in and said they couldn't do much of it.

So the courts have slowed down the process of mass firings, but they're certainly not hiring anybody, anybody new, and some of these agencies, you know, are effectively gutted and ceasing to exist in functional form.

Yeah,

it's just funny.

It's like, I feel like there are things that happen that are in the public eye, and then they disappear so fast, right?

And we're like appalled by things.

When Los Angeles happened, right?

Right.

When we saw human beings being taken from their families, like just, you know, and in the abstract, I understood

that

due process had been suspended and that we people that are the most vulnerable members of society are

being taken from their families and put in effectively cages

you guys are up against so much right now and like how do you how do you hand there's like 18,000 different things that you have to like fix correct yeah so I listen I think this is the biggest struggle for all of us is to understand you know what is real and a persistent threat what is Trump just trying to change the news cycle?

And so I think we're starting to figure out where our power is.

But it does affect how I spend my time.

So I spend a lot of my time these days just trying to help stand-up mobilization all around the country.

So I, for instance, like stopped raising money for my own political campaign.

And I only raise money right now.

I only raise money for protest groups all around the country.

And I've given out probably close to a million dollars to protest groups, just trying to help people organize around things like Jimmy Kimmel being taken down off the air so that we can give people some hope that if we mobilize around, for instance, the boycott of Disney, that we can actually start to save some of our constitutional rights.

Yeah.

I want to try something, but I need my cell phone for this.

I have an idea.

Okay.

I left my cell phone over there.

Okay.

So, I'm sorry about this.

It's unprofessional to me.

Props.

Okay.

So.

Okay.

We're going to try something.

Alright.

Okay.

So.

Let's.

No, no, no, no.

I'm not.

It's fine, dude.

Don't worry, dude.

Fucking don't worry.

Okay.

Let's...

I'm from a foreign country, okay?

Okay.

And I'm also stupid, okay?

Yeah.

This is in this hypothetical situation.

Not because I'm from a foreign country, just because I happen to be a stupid guy.

Just to be clear.

Got it.

Okay.

Could you please explain to me, I just arrived in America.

Could you please explain to me what is the Democratic Party?

So you ready?

Yeah.

Right.

So the Democratic Party stands for the idea that everybody in this country should have the opportunity to succeed and that the economy today is rigged to favor billionaires and corporations over everybody else.

The Democratic Party also believes that our democracy is rigged right now to support the powerful and not the powerless.

What we stand for is giving more power to workers and making sure that the people are in charge of democracy, not the economic elites.

Thank you.

Okay.

How long was that?

It's good.

Let's play it.

can you play it?

No, pause.

Sorry,

I thought this was gonna be really funny.

Thomas, no, now they want me to translate it.

Just, okay, how do I, how do I do the, how do I make it play?

What are you using?

What happened?

Google Translate.

Thomas,

it's gonna be a hilarious bit.

How do I make it play in my language?

Dude, this is so embarrassing.

This is just so fucking embarrassing right now.

This is what editing is for, right?

This is the biggest opportunity of my life.

It's a member of the club of 100.

Your friend, you know,

you know Lindsey Grant, dude.

You're like fucking.

Royalty.

This is so embarrassing.

I told him I'm a tech aficionado when I booked him.

I got a heart out.

What time's your heart out?

Where do you have to go?

The island?

Come on.

I'm sorry, dude.

I'm nervous and I deflected.

Do it again.

What do you mean, do it again?

It's mean to do it, but he's

okay.

Allow, Axa.

Yeah, so what's the Democratic Party?

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

No, you put it in Greek, dude.

I want it Chinese.

Okay, and also it's Greek.

Oh, shit, dude.

Thomas, he's speaking English.

I'm speaking.

This is so embarrassing, dude.

This is one of the biggest moments of my career.

Well, what's supposed to happen here?

This guy knows, he knows Jon Thune.

This guy, he knows a...

Come on.

So, what's the Democratic Party?

I'm doing it again.

What?

All right.

The Democratic Party stands for...

What is the Democratic Party?

Just

going to be hilarious, guys.

Okay.

The Democratic Party stands for the idea that everyone in this nation should have an opportunity to succeed, not just billionaires and millionaires.

That's good.

Okay, yeah, that's pretty good.

And now play.

I got it.

Thanks a lot.

Guys, let's give it up for that bit.

How funny was it?

I see that there are like a lot of

like when you look at the popular sentiment of your voting base,

you see 8%

of Democrats support

what's happening in Gaza.

You see that

ICE has a 13%

favorability amongst you guys.

And then

we can link that to child separation policies were happening under Biden.

And Obama did take a small DHS program and expand it dramatically.

And

beyond all that,

it kind of seems to me the Democrats' voting base is not reflected in the actions of the party more often than not.

Yeah, I mean, I think there's two things going on right now.

One is that people are just pissed off that we haven't been more effective in stopping Trump's authoritarian takeover.

So you've got our approval ratings in the toilet in part because our own folks want us to be fighting harder.

But second, I think to your point, you know, we over time became a technocratic party that advertised we could just run government well and we could make some adjustments to the market to make your life better, instead of being a moral party, right, which talked about the economy and the world in moral terms.

And that means that we have looked illegitimate in the eyes of many when our solution to a

fundamentally morally broken healthcare system was to just send more money to the insurance companies.

And that we looked like we didn't understand what was happening in Gaza when we talked about trying to manage behind the scenes the number of Gazans who were being killed on any single one day instead of just saying, no, for the time being, the United States cannot continue to sell weapons to israel until this carnage stops why hasn't the party

what we're seeing is in terms of favorability ratings trump is more has a higher favorability than the the democratic party even with everything happening right now with uh you know at like a rise in political violence of like uh just uh him stoking the flames you know and say like you know blame it on the other side instead of saying calm down everyone like it seems like there's to me like there's a grappling and like you guys are fucking fighting each other like in the party to define what the message is.

And it's, they're really good at falling in line, you know?

They're like, okay, we're MAGA now, except for like Mitt Romney and, you know, Cheney's daughter.

Yeah, you basically get kicked out of the party anyway.

Yeah.

Yeah, they're a cult of personality right now.

And so, of course, they're going to have more sort of solidarity in terms of how popular the party is.

Listen, people want to see us fighting.

And they have not seen us draw that moral line in the sand about what Trump has done.

We've had opportunities to do it.

Back in the spring, we could have chosen not to fund the government unless there was some commitment that there was going to be a little bit less totalitarianism.

We maybe shouldn't have all showed up to the State of the Union speech to have provided a nice bipartisan backdrop for, you know, whatever.

To hurt his feelings.

Yeah.

And now we are, you know, two weeks away from another moment where the party could say, we have no moral obligation to pay the bills for the destruction of our democracy.

And so if you want our votes for this budget, then you've got to build some protections into this budget so that there's less of a chance that we lose our constitutional rights.

What are the discussions like within your caucus?

Because it seems like, you know, like why

here in New York City, the biggest city in America, like we've, like, why haven't we seen party leaders endorse the Democratic nominee for mayor?

Yeah, I mean,

I can't speak for them, but it's sort of the same feeling that the party has historically had about Bernie, right?

That Bernie's politics are fringe, they're dangerous, when in fact, Bernie's politics and Momdami's politics to an extent are the pathway to a crossover into Trump's base, right?

Legitimate populists, people that are actually talking about plans to take power from the corporatists and give it to regular people.

That's the only way that you're going to reach into Trump's base and steal some of his voters who are coming to the conclusion that he's not a legitimate populist.

So I just have always drawn issue with this idea that populism,

hostility to market fundamentalism is a danger inside the party.

I think that's our corporate crowd selling us a lie.

And I think the only way that we're ever going to be competitive again in a place like Missouri or Ohio is being a true populist party that attacks corporate power.

And that's the sort of route and the path that both Bernie and Zoran are showing us.

Two things.

One is like to what extent is it his political message and

versus him being a young charismatic talent that threatens entrenched powers that be?

And the second thing is like what do you do about the corporatist side of the party?

Like how does one, how do you,

like within your caucus, you have a tremendous amount of people that are opposed to that vision of a path forward.

How do you coalesce behind that?

Like you, Chris Murphy, is

trying to enact this.

how do you convince Chuck Schumer?

Like, you know?

Yeah, well, I think part of it is taking a look at

candidates who are running in swing states as populists and show that they can win.

Part of it is to show that Zorin can get a very big majority in this upcoming election, to show that these are actually candidates who can win in general elections.

I know New York City is not the same as Minnesota, but I think that's part of the

threatened by young talent?

I think they're threatened by the idea that people don't pay their dues.

I think the whole system is generally built on this idea that you sort of wait your time until you run.

I didn't do that.

I ran when I was 25.

But yes, I think that folks who have waited their time, moved through the

ladder, don't like the fact that somebody can just show up at 24, 25, 30 years old, run, and win.

That is a recipe for disaster for our party if we don't welcome new young candidates in.

But yeah, I think that's sort of a, I think you would feel that way if you were middle management at a corporation.

You wouldn't love the young hot shot coming in and sitting at the desk next to you, and that happens in politics too.

But what if he's like, he could like beat Trump or like he's like good?

Yeah.

I mean, is it more important that like he's not threatening to like Diane Feinstein or like whoever, like people that have been there for, I know she's, she's not there anymore.

No, she's not there anymore.

She's not around.

I'm not defending defending it i'm just trying to like plug it i'm just trying to like put it in context that it's a it is not a unfamiliar human emotion right to be envious of somebody that is younger and perhaps smarter than you and perhaps being openly or subconsciously hostile That doesn't mean that it's right, and that means you've got to build a party apparatus that actually welcomes in young people, which is why what David Hogg has been doing is really, really important, like directly confronting this idea that we are hostile often as a party to to young people, more hostile, I would argue, than the Republican Party has been.

I guess, like, do you get that treatment as like you're a young bull, you're a like 52-year-old senator?

Yeah, you know, you're a sprightly young man.

They're like, what is this?

What is this freaking millennial coming through with his cell phones and his TikToks?

I mean, like, I think by the

young half of the

younger half of the United States Senate.

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You're recently separated from your wife in the last couple of years.

Yep.

Last year.

Jesus, like last year.

Dealing with this right now and like dealing also with, I would imagine, like a marriage, you know?

Like, how the fuck do you,

like, that's clouds fucking suck yeah it does yeah I mean it's a weird

it's a weird job I mean the fact that you have to send out a you know public statement about your

marriage breaking down and then you have to be in the middle of trying to save democracy at the same time

you're you're a real freak though yeah you're built different it's a lot yeah but I have two I have two kids you know who are teenagers and

they are gonna inherit one world or another world depending on what happens in the next you know two years and so I feel an obligation, not just as a human being, but as a father, to

stay in this fight.

And I mean, I had, for a lot of my career,

I think I said this to you on the phone, I had a lot of sort of gray.

I could sort of see both arguments in terms of like what the strategic direction should be for the party.

I don't have that gray any longer.

Like I see this guy as a present threat, and I believe that if we don't draw a moral line in the sand right now, we're screwed as a nation.

I see our party screwed.

If we continue to march down this neoliberal market fundamentalist path, we have to be an aggressively populist party that talks about breaking up concentrated corporate power.

So I also feel blessed that for one of the first times in my career, I don't have any question.

Yeah, I know,

I'm not arguing with myself about the direction the country needs to go in or the direction the party needs to go in.

And so, you know, no matter what's happening in my personal life, I'm definitely not walking away at this moment of peril and at a moment where i feel like i have something to say i mean it's like i remember last time i went through a breakup i had like most of my friends i realized most of my friends had girlfriends or wives so i had to start hanging out with my single friends do you start chilling more with the single senators you and lindsey going out to get some some tail i have not gone out with i have not gone out with lindsey grand before or before or after

that was just right there it was tempting is he chilled he's got to be a real word.

He's not.

Yeah, he's not.

Chill would not be the word.

I wouldn't say chill, but would not be the word to just change.

He's got chops.

He's intense.

He's got chops, that guy.

Yeah, you mean he's a talented person.

He's Frank Underwood.

He's like, got like, he can make moves.

Merrick Garland, I want to talk about because you guys, wasn't it?

You could have gone nuclear?

Is that right?

No,

no, no.

No, we had no power to stop what they were doing.

They were in the majority at the time, and the majority controls the floor of the Senate.

And they just chose not to bring a vote on Merrick Garland.

We have no ability or power as the minority to force a vote on the Senate floor.

So was there also some sort of like hubris that like Hillary's about to beat Trump and we'll just get it next time?

I mean I think in retrospect like we did not fight hard enough.

We didn't sort of bring that case to the American people.

I think that was why.

No, I think that was why.

I think we did have hubris that we thought there's no way Trump was going to win.

And so, you know, ultimately, we were going to solve this through an election.

We did not raise that issue at the crisis level we should have because we were overconfident about the election.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, am I correct in remembering this?

She said she didn't want to retire because she wanted a female president to replace her.

I don't remember that.

Maybe there were reports that she said that behind the side.

Obama should have yelled her.

But I don't remember.

She certainly wouldn't have said that on the record.

But yeah, how little was she?

I mean, we don't hang out with the Supreme Court.

But you see her at the State of the the Union.

I mean, she's got a lot of people.

But I wasn't like measured.

I wasn't like measuring.

She was like 3.5, maybe?

3.6.

I must think she's 3.5.

That's what it looked like.

She's taller.

On TV, maybe.

She's a big personality.

A big personality.

Yeah, she used to

lift weights.

Remember that?

I hated those t-shirts, though.

Oh, they're still out there.

The notorious RBG.

Yeah.

What the hell are they talking about?

She's just some blade.

It is true.

If you remember, I mean, at the beginning of that campaign, none none of the sort of mainstream media people even covered Trump as a presidential candidate.

I mean, they covered him, those debates.

They did.

Those are box office.

They were.

No,

and that's in part why he's getting away with this corruption at scale, because he's doing it in front of everybody for people to see it.

And

I hate to say it, but there does seem to be an element of the country that is more forgiving of the corruption as long as they're watching it, which is wild to me.

But I even think my party sometimes feels that way because if this was uncovered, you know, the crypto scheme, that he was doing it behind the scenes.

Bitcoin.

Yeah.

Yeah,

we would be talking about it every day.

But because it's happening in front of everybody, because he's admitting to the corruption, just like he was admitting to giving to both sides, everybody seems to wave it away, which we shouldn't.

Or he could lie and his guys are like, of course he's lying, but he's our guy.

He's lying for us.

That's why the media, every time they'd be like, excuse me, fact check, like it never worked because they're like, his fans were like, yeah, we like he's lying for us.

So why?

And again, it comes back to this

thing that the right wing believes, not everybody, but a lot of them, that the left is this existential threat to the nation.

And so we need to do whatever is necessary in order to defeat him, including electing somebody that we

know is likely a fraud, who we know is lying.

But if he's the guy that is going to rid us, of the Democratic Party,

then we're on board.

I think he was more like just a virus that they couldn't control.

Because I remember Reines, when we were saying everyone had one week, Rines would just throw another one out there.

Because at first it was Jeb, and then he'd be like, just try.

And then they get smacked down in a debate.

But what it was, was the structure of the RNC was kind of crumbling.

Rhines Priebus as their, you know, the leader of their party, whatever.

What is the DNC?

Like,

what is the DNC at this point?

Well, but the other thing that was happening was that he was on to this message that the Republican Party couldn't understand the power of, which was this anti-China, anti-outsourcing message, right?

So he actually,

it wasn't just that he had a brand.

He actually did figure out that the sort of big middle of the country wanted somebody who was going to aggressively attack the old rules that allowed for the outsourcing.

And no other Republican was willing to do that.

And the Democratic Party, frankly, wasn't willing to do it at the level that we should have.

I saw, you've talked a lot about how you've gone to the middle of the country, you've gone to Missouri, you've kind of spoken to people that are Republican voters, and it's kind of like clarified your

populist economic vision for the party moving forward.

I saw,

real quick, I saw you on Hassan Min Hajj.

He did this game that really pissed me off with you, the island thing.

And you were about to be like, can I like...

Not do it?

Well, you were like, can I like critique the premise of this?

But he was saying, well,

would you

allow people that don't take the vaccine into the tent if they support your economic

populist message?

It kind of, to me,

represented kind of how Democrats talk about electoral politics.

Really, instead of you saying, I'm going to lay out, this is my case, right?

You vote for me.

I'm sure a racist has voted for you before, right?

You don't, what are you going to do about it?

He thought you were the better candidate, right?

the the every time there's a post-mortem of an election, it feels like the Democrats treat the electorate as like, treat themselves like victims of the electorate.

Like we, this last time with Kamala,

Kamala, she was, she was like,

we were screwed over by Latino men.

And it's just like, there's a vision of electoral politics as like, you owe me and not like, we owe you.

Is that right or am I missing something?

Because that's what it looks like to me.

Yeah, listen, I just think we need to be in the business of winning elections rather than being super particular about who votes for us.

And so that's why my argument is that the party simplifies its message, that we become a party that stands for unrigging the economy so that it works for regular people, not corporations, and unrigging the democracy.

And then we're not as particular about who comes in and joins our coalition if you believe in those two things.

And guess what?

Like 75% of the country would sign up for those two projects.

But because we've applied all these litmus tests as a party, I mean, on issues that I really care about, like guns,

we have forced a lot of people out

who otherwise, based on their belief in a fairer economy and a better government, would sign up for our project.

But because they aren't with us on choice or they aren't with us on climate or they aren't with us on guns, they vote for a fraud for a Charles.

Is that the litmus?

I feel like it's a little backwards.

I think it's like,

to me, it feels like you guys only have that, right?

You guys only have like, let's be nice to gay people because there's no substantive

transactional offer.

Like you can go to the hospital.

Like if you're sick, you can go to the doctor.

Yeah, there's got to be this.

You're talking about a moral core.

There's got to be a moral core to the party.

Of course, we should be nice to gay people, right?

But like, but that's like, it feels like

papering over like a lack of substance.

So it's like no, like what we did, like our like what was our position on prescription drugs for a decade?

We had this plan where we were going to put the Medicare in charge of renegotiating prices with the drug companies on the top 10 drugs to try to get a better bulk price.

Like you lost people, right?

Shut up.

Cap the cost of all drugs in this country.

Cap the amount of profits that any drug company can make.

Simple, big ideas that transfer power from corporations to regular families.

You can go to the doctor.

I mean, mean, it's like just, it works.

Yes, that nobody should

get sick or die in this country because you are poor.

People lose their life savings because they have cancer.

I mean, it's just like it's fucked up.

Yes.

And listen, I actually would argue that if you create that bigger tent party that, for instance, brings people in that don't agree with us on

transgender rights, that at least they're like in the tent now and like they have a commonality with us in economics and and now we have an opportunity to talk to them about why transgender kids or gay kids aren't a threat to them personally but when they just sit in this Fox News closed ecosystem and we don't make any effort to bring them in

you know we're just continuing to sort of put up the walls yeah

you've you've investigated a lot of like online conservative culture as well

and you talk a lot about loneliness and the loneliness epidemic and I want to get into that you read you've read um conservative

writers like Yarvin and

Dineen?

Yeah, Curtis Yarvin, who's kind of a more radical conservative writer.

He's

a monarchist.

He's the monarchist, yeah.

Patrick Dineen is, you know, is an author who sort of just critiques liberalism more broadly from a Catholic conservative perspective.

And you've listened to a couple of conservative podcasts, Red Scare.

I've heard a lot about that.

You've heard about Red?

Yeah, what is it?

what's it about?

Red scare?

Yeah, what is it?

I've heard people talk about it all the time.

What?

You talk a lot about loneliness.

That's been

like a topic that you've been highlighting.

And

I saw somewhere that you wanted to have a minister of loneliness.

No, I didn't want to have a minister of loneliness.

I saw that.

But first of all, that's English.

It might have been characterized as a minister of loneliness.

No, I wanted, I have proposed that you should have an office at the White House and the federal government that thinks about how policies make it easier or harder for people to connect to other human beings.

And is it just one guy sitting there?

No, not one guy.

It was going to be

a committee.

I'm not saying it was going to solve the problem.

I just think that you should have some place where you talk about the fact that the thing that matters most to us when it comes to our happiness is not our job or our career, how much money we make, but our relationships.

And it's a little weird to me that we spend no time in government talking about how our policies increasingly make it hard for people to find companionship.

So yeah, there was like a headline that was like, Chris Murphy wants the government to help you make friends.

Okay, that sounds like a bullshit.

That sounds like a bullshit use of

government power, but

it is true that we should probably think more about the way in which government is making it harder for people to

connect with each other.

Did you ever think about who you would make the Minister of Loneliness?

There's no Minister of Loneliness.

I was thinking ex tentacion, but he's dead.

Jeb Bush would be good.

Jeb, he seems like a nice guy.

He seems like a nice guy.

Apparently,

I was looking up good ideas for Minister of Loneliness.

Apparently, Dwayne The Rock Johnson has been very open about his struggles with depression.

I'm open for applications for this position that doesn't actually exist, and I haven't proposed.

I could do it.

Yeah.

You could dual hat.

I'll do that and do Ambassador of Brazil.

And do the show.

And the show.

Jewish YouTube talk show, show, Ambassador of Brazil, loneliest man in America.

But when I, the first time I ever wrote anything about loneliness was like this short little article called The Politics of Loneliness, basically saying the government should pay attention to how lonely people are today.

I had more feedback to that article than maybe anything else I had written because like in their daily lives, especially parents, are seeing how catastrophic it is that we spend...

in some instances, 50% less time with friends than we did just 30 years ago.

And that has consequences for our health, for our politics.

A lot of those folks who showed up on January 6th were pretty lonely, lonely people.

They didn't have any friends.

I mean, some of them, I imagine.

Come on, dude.

Some of them, I imagine, had some struggles.

They were losers.

Some struggles.

Some struggles socially.

You're saying they're absolute losers.

I'm saying that loneliness, that when you feel lonely,

when you feel lonely, you feel sad, but then you feel angry and you're looking for an outlet.

Well, I think beyond loneliness to me,

I think it's a seminal issue of our time, genuinely.

But I think that it needs to be viewed as a symptom, perhaps.

Data will tell you that people have been retreating

from companionship since another seminal event, which is the invention of the smartphone.

I think it was trending that way, and I think it fell off the cliff when people were at home for two years.

No,

100%.

I mean, so

I experienced it as, you know, a human being and as a parent, and I saw the damage it did to my kids and their friends.

So when we wrote the sort of COVID rescue bill right after Biden was sworn in, I really spent all my political capital pushing for one thing, and it was a fund for summer camps.

Just to put as many kids as we could that summer of 2021 into summer camp, especially as many poor kids as we could who had really been home alone.

And their families were dying.

And their families were

sick or their parents were essential workers, so

the kids were home alone.

right so that's all i was focused on was like get kids into summer camp yeah um so it's a and i remember talking right after the pandemic to these uh kindergarten first grade teachers who are getting kids back from the pandemic and they were just like we will never be able to make up for the lost time that like a three, four, five-year-old lost.

A third of your life.

Socialization, right?

They basically showed up at school without basic socialization skills, which meant they couldn't learn.

and they were just behind without really the ability to catch up their entire career.

And that's the reality for millions of kids in this country.

Yeah, so I think like the way we discuss a lot of these problems is

like we're trimming leaves and there's something at the trunk.

And I think like when we talk about incels or like when we talk about basement dwellers or we talk,

we're talking about people that are kind of squeezed out of the economy.

You know, the economy can't absorb labor at the same rate that it it used to.

And we're talking about people that have kind of been squeezed out of society by various circumstances.

And like, I think it's like a little bit like we're just addressing the,

you know, the result and we're not addressing like in a kind of human way or like a moral way, you know, like what people,

what has led people here.

You know?

But don't you think it goes even deeper?

Yeah.

I mean, I do think that there's this transition that happens from the middle of the century to later in the century where, you we cared much more about our neighbors and the community and the common good.

And we eventually got taught that really the only thing that mattered was profit and efficiency and our personal achievement.

And we started to sort of separate as

a culture as we became obsessed with our own individual achievement.

This is not helped by kind of like the self-help revolution where we're told that if you're feeling bad, what you need to do is just retreat into yourself instead of joining with others.

And we just over time become a culture that is really self-obsessive.

And we don't see as much health, personal health, in socialization.

And so I think and the layer smartphones and the pandemic on top of that, that cultural shift that happens.

And we're

crude.

We need China to take Twitter away.

I don't know that China.

I think Zhi.

So just say it to him right now.

He's watching.

Xi, just come over and take the phone.

We'd be much better if it went away, but it will be replaced by something else.

So the only solution here ultimately is for, I hate to say it, but for government to come in and say, here are the rules, right?

I mean, here's who can be on social media.

Here's how kids can interact with it.

Here's what it can deliver to kids.

Give at least young people a fighting shot so that they're not addicted when they become 18.

You've been in Congress 20 years, the legislative branch 20 years.

Yeah.

Right.

And

the perception of that...

as an institution is that it's it's decayed or crumbled in that period.

Does it feel that way for you as someone that goes to the office there?

Like, does it feel like it's, you know.

Sure.

Yeah, we very rarely pass legislation.

Much more of my life now is about critiquing the other side than sitting down and actually passing things that make people's lives better.

How does it feel like, as a guy, like to be part of

something like that?

Yeah,

it's not what I signed up for.

You feel like we suck.

Well, I mean, a couple of years ago, I mean, I really deliberately decided to bend over backwards to try to get in those rare rooms where the deals get cut.

And I did that for a handful of years, and I got good at it.

And for that period of time, whether it was on the gun bill.

There's a cigar places that you go to the cigar, those things?

They're not back rooms.

Yeah, there are legitimate still back rooms in that place.

And you do cigars?

No cigars, but there's booze.

Booze.

Yeah.

And you and McConnell are like, this is.

McConnell was not in any of the rooms that I was in, but no, there are still places, they're much more rare, where deals get cut.

And I decided to very deliberately try to get in those rooms for a period of time.

And then Trump got elected.

And those rooms completely disappeared.

And it felt like the job was just to try to protect democracy.

But yeah, I made the decision to be more purposeful about that work because the job was feeling pretty empty.

You feel like it's the hardest era?

You know, like in the NBA, they're saying, like, there's a lot of debate between the eras, like Jordan versus LeBron?

No, there was an era.

I feel like you're playing in the hardest era.

There was an era where like senators were getting caned over the head, right?

Was that, yeah?

I would imagine, I would, I would argue that.

Have two senators ever hooked up or like congressmen or anything?

Sure.

Really?

There were two congresspeople that were that were married.

They got married.

They met at Congress?

I think this is right.

I think, didn't Sonny, right?

Who?

Sonny Bono?

Sonny Bono and Mary Bono.

Oh, right?

Oh, and he died in the skiing accident.

I got you, babe.

I want to kind of get into some what like the bigger kind of existential questions.

Like, it's breaking.

breaking yeah right

do you think can you can it can you fix it is it really you I know you're you're gonna say yes but like actually like

yes you can

you can actually fix it right so what is the first structural thing that you would that you would change like change about the okay so you're not talking about how do you defeat the sort of slide to totalitarianism.

You're talking about how do you fix the actual

project of of democracy.

There are a ton of things in the rules that are implemented that fuck shit working in the legislative branch or the executive branch.

So there are some things that you can do internally, right?

So I am a believer that the Senate should be a majoritarian institution ultimately, a place where 50 votes passes a piece of legislation, so you can't blame

bullshit.

Yeah, I think the Senate should probably.

So why is Wyoming gets as much as California?

That's not fair.

We decided, right, the founders decided to make it really hard to pass legislation on those free slaves.

And the design of the design was

likely to make it hard to

free the slaves.

But the design was also because they believed that a faction could very easily corrupt a single parliamentary system and transition democracy into autocracy.

So by setting up a really complicated system of government with two houses and a president, they thought it was actually protective of democracy.

And I think 250 years into the experiment, you have to come to the conclusion that they were right, no matter how inefficient having a house and the senate and a presidential signature is.

But haven't we seen, especially during the McConnell reign, like it kind of be a bottleneck, I think?

Yes,

which is why ultimately you should get rid of the filibuster and allow for 50 votes in the Senate to be able to pass something.

But really, the foundational reform is the way that campaigns are financed.

And you've got to pass a constitutional amendment to do that.

And I think the only way the Democrats are going to be able to interest people in this country in saving democracy is to be really specific about what we're going to change.

And I think that requires either a constitutional amendment or a constitutional convention to essentially allow the legislature to ban private money, corporate money, lobbyist money, anonymous money from politics.

I think if you did that, that's probably the most sort of significant significant bomb on the system.

I agree with you.

It seems to be the first order of business, but like it seems like, you know.

Could you even convince the Democratic Party as a whole, like your caucus and Congress?

Because I think a lot of Democrats are kind of entrenched in that system.

There's still a ton of billionaires who fund our party.

There's still a ton of Democrats who take and rely on corporate contributions.

I mean, I'm lucky, and so it's easy for me to sort of talk about getting rid of corporate and PAC money because I am one of these candidates now who has, you know, thousands of people who give me three, $5 at a time.

But what I found was that when I swore off PAC money, more people, regular people, were willing to give me money because they wanted to reward me for not taking PAC money.

They trust you too.

Yeah, they trust me.

They trust me more and they want to get behind somebody who's going to say I'm not taking PAC money.

And I think that would be the case for other candidates who did it.

But yes, yes, our party has become reliant on that sort of corporate PAC and billionaire trough.

And it's what makes us a little sclerotic when we try to rally around efforts to change the campaign finance system.

That's just the truth.

What is it?

Like, just walk me through, like, when you're trying to fundraise, like, you're talking to a billionaire.

Like,

what's the vibe?

Like, yeah, I mean, when.

He's like, I'm going to give you this check just because, but.

Well, so, but so I'm talking to, so I don't have to do that.

But, like,

I don't have to do that anymore.

But I did.

I used to do a lot of it, right?

I used to sit in a cubicle in the Democratic National Committee when I was a House member for three, four hours at a time

just calling people for money.

Who are you calling?

You're not calling people who are making $30,000.

Of course.

You're calling somebody who's making $3 million.

The monopoly, man.

Yeah.

Now, you're calling Democratic donors by and large.

they're not racists and they do believe in a progressive tax code, but

not that they're not, no they're not,

but maybe not that progressive.

And maybe these donors are not super

excited about labor unions getting a lot stronger.

And maybe they don't want everybody to have health care through a single payer system because they make a lot of money from their investments in the insurance industry and the pharmaceutical industry.

It's transactional.

It's not like you think it's transactional.

It isn't like House of Cards in the sense that a donor says, I'm only going to donate to you if

you support this policy.

It's not.

It's a lot like that.

But it's not as much as you think.

Pretty much exactly.

But different.

But it is.

And I will have the power.

But it is just corrupting to be on the phone with

billionaires and millionaires instead of being on the phone with

janitors and

teachers.

You talk to a lot more janitors now that you don't take

according to the money.

Well, I mean, I didn't start like, so you were very

walk, but I I do this thing where I, you know, walk across the state every day.

How long does it take?

It takes a week.

A week?

You know?

I don't know that I had the time to do that back when I was spending all my time raising money.

Dude, I bet you that lady that you beat your first run at Congress, what's her name?

Nancy Johnson.

She could beat that.

I bet you Nancy could get it.

Do it in less than a week.

Five days.

Do it in less than a week.

I don't know.

No, that's, I mean, like, I...

I think that.

I don't want to make it more than it is, but it's just, I think in this job, what I realized is that you have to

actually make efforts to get out of the bubble and to not just think that the people who call your office or the people who donate money to your campaign are the voices that matter.

So I know that the walk across the state looks to a lot of people like a gimmicky thing, but it is actually useful to me to make sure.

I'll tell you, you were talking about this before.

The summer that the Mueller investigation was like everything that MSNBC was talking about, I walked across the state right at the height of that Mueller fervor.

And I probably talked to a couple hundred people on that walk.

One person brought up Mueller to me.

One.

Like nobody bought it.

Nobody was plugged into it.

And he was actively using the office to make himself richer, which is like clearly like out in the open.

Well, and it was.

I mean, it was clearly, and also against the law.

They had to make it about James Bond shit.

It distracted us from actually being connected into the stuff that people really were talking about and caring about.

Yeah.

I'm not saying it wasn't important because I actually do think that there's a pretty awful story there, whether or not there was like daily coordination between the Trump campaign and the Russians.

The Russians clearly had an impact on the election.

But the fact that we obsessed over that instead of actually learning our lessons as a party as to why we lost to this guy was,

you know, is a big part of the reason why we're here today.

I guess like,

I mean, like, I really appreciate sitting down with you.

And like,

it makes sense why you have this vision for, you know, economic policy because the most popular person in the party right now is Bernie, basically.

Right?

And this is like, it reflects popular sentiment.

How can you get the rest of the Democratic Party to fall in line?

Yeah,

I don't know that I'm winning this argument right now.

Again, that sort of that legacy of connection to the party, to that corporate crowd, is real.

You have Chuck's number?

Let's hit him up.

Well, I mean, I think we should.

I don't know why we don't pay attention to the fact that the only people that can command 50,000 people are Bernie Sanders and AOC.

And

I just think it's there for the taking that there are these Republican voters today, people who support Trump, who are seeing him for who he really is, but are waiting for the Democratic Party to offer them something meaty.

So I guess I don't have the secret sauce in terms of how to make this argument.

I do think it will be important for us to nominate a handful of those candidates.

You chill Bernie?

Bernie?

Again, like, again,

he doesn't hang.

Have you got a laugh from him?

Yeah.

Really?

I know you're going to ask me what I said.

What did you say?

I don't remember what I said.

I think

Bernie laughs.

So you talk about

what are these people behind the scenes.

Bernie is like...

He's Bernie.

He's burning.

Yes, that's why it works because he's super authentic everywhere.

And Trump is Trump behind the scenes.

So, you know, people can smell insincerity a lot more, a lot better than they could.

So generation.

You're doing authenticity right now.

How do you you feel about authenticity?

I mean...

You have to talk to this fool.

But this, I mean,

this job does mess with you, right?

Because especially if you started before Trump when you were taught that you're not supposed to be authentic,

you're supposed to be practiced.

And so

if you're kind of my generation or a generation before me,

it's a hard pivot, like from, you know, don't say anything unless it's been vetted by 16 communications professionals to say whatever the hell you want even if it's not popular yeah or not PC because people want to see the real you.

So just say it.

Bruce Hornsby is the best musician of all time.

I do say it.

I'm not going to apologize for short.

He's a brilliant musician.

By your staffers.

He didn't stop making music in the 1980s like most people think he did.

He's got a just killer.

catalog of music that continues to this day and that's why I am bringing my entire staff of mostly 20 year olds to go hear Bruce Hornsby in D.C.

next week.

Because if they hear him, they are going to be opened up to the genius that is Bruce.

Bruce Hornsby.

And I'm going to meet him.

What do you mean?

Because you're in the conversation.

I know.

I got his manager's info and I asked if I could meet him.

Who's manager?

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