Ben Wittes and Ro Khanna: Stormy Rafah

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Speaker 12 Hello and welcome to the Bullwork Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller.
It is Thursday. I'm here with Ben Wittis, who's been in court all week.

Speaker 12 And right now, he's at the Law Fair Hype House, the Law Fair TikTok Hype House in New York City, where everybody's hanging out. He also writes Dog Shirt Daily.
He's the editor chief in law fair.

Speaker 12 He does so much. Just one other thing that he does.
There's a Law podcast as well. Lawfair Daily.
Ben Wittis did kind of a monologue episode on Israel, Gaza, and the implications for the U.S.

Speaker 12 foreign and domestic policy. That's what it was called.
We're not going to talk about that today, but it was awesome.

Speaker 12 And so if you want to know what does Tim think about this, like basically everything that Ben Wittis said in this podcast is what I think. And so we can just shortchange talking about it right now.

Speaker 12 And I just, I kind of give you my,

Speaker 12 I give you my proxy on this matter. People can go check that out

Speaker 12 that's very kind of you it was a it was a speech i gave at brown university a couple weeks ago and was uh something i put a lot of thought into and people have found it interesting and useful and i i appreciate that very much yeah very nuanced very thoughtful you can tell you put time into it something you notice about these once you become a podcast man you can notice when people are winging it yes you know they like to think that we're just so talented at this that you know we can fake it and maybe i fake a few listeners but people can notice when you really put time and prepped into it.

Speaker 12 So, it showed in that podcast. People should go check it out, okay?

Speaker 12 Before we get into everything, before we get into the case, the merits, the testimony, there's one thing I've just been dying to ask somebody that was in the room, you know, who can who is going to give it to me straight.

Speaker 12 When Stormy was on stage,

Speaker 12 that's a Freudian slip, when Stormy was on the stand talking about Donald Trump's just horrific lovemaking and borderline rape and how his wife doesn't love him.

Speaker 12 What was it like to just be able to look at Donald Trump's face during that time?

Speaker 14 So I was in the overflow room, which is actually good because I could look at his face. Whereas, you know, if you're in the courtroom, you're actually looking at the back of his head.

Speaker 12 The weird kind of hair merging from the three hair surgeries that kind of comes together.

Speaker 12 Exactly.

Speaker 14 And it has this kind of like one thing that I'd never really thought about in this trial is that people don't have facial expressions on the back of their head, which, you know, is obvious once you think about it, but you don't usually.

Speaker 12 That's not true for me, actually. I have such a bad poker face that you can even read me from the back of my head.
But for most people, that's true.

Speaker 14 Right. So Donald Trump, actually, the back of his head is fairly good poker face.
I think it looks just like Donald Trump all the time.

Speaker 14 So I was very interested in his reactions to Stormy Daniels' testimony, which mostly he sat with his eyes kind of gently closed, like this.

Speaker 14 I don't think he was asleep, by the way, or napping, but I think he was kind of trying to show that it was not getting to him or affecting him. He consulted with counsel,

Speaker 14 mostly Todd Blanche, who is kind of the Trump whisperer among the group. They all have their very specific jobs, and Blanche's job, I think, is the client management side, which is freaking hard.

Speaker 14 But mostly, I think he must have either consciously or subconsciously made a decision that he was not going to have kind of demonstrative reactions that would, you know, generate like Stormy Daniels said X and Trump flinched or Storm, you know, kind of news stories because people were really watching him closely.

Speaker 14 The transcript does reflect that he was at some points, and the judge actually called Blanche up and talked to him about this,

Speaker 14 that he was kind of muttering curses and sort of saying things in an audible fashion.

Speaker 14 Those were in sidebar conversations with the lawyers that are reflected in the transcript, but I didn't see any of that. So I think he was unfortunately,

Speaker 14 because I would love to say to you, and I'd love to see your face when I said this. I would love to say, you know, he was out of control.
He really was getting to him.

Speaker 14 But I don't actually think I can say that in entire truth. The truth is that he was, I think he was pretty much the Donald Trump he would want to be under these circumstances.

Speaker 12 Luckily for me, I was going to be happy with whatever answer because a non-response when someone is talking about how you have no love in your marriage and how you quasi-raped them leads to, you know, kind of a sociopathy that I think I attributed to Donald Trump as well.

Speaker 12 So, you know, whining Donald Trump, I like sociopathic Donald Trump, I'll also accept. Let's go to bigger picture then, and we kind of go through some of the big marks since we last talked.

Speaker 12 But you called this on the sub stack the case we all deserve. We may have thought we'd have a trial about high politics, about executive power, a great constitutional principle, but

Speaker 12 we have a trial about something else. So

Speaker 12 talk to us about

Speaker 12 how you're trying to frame this up.

Speaker 14 I was never one of the people who was dismissive of this case. And I always said, let's wait for the evidence, let's wait for the legal arguments, let's wait for the motions to dismiss.

Speaker 14 But I was one of the people who said this case is objectively less important than the January 6th case. It's objectively less important than the Florida case, which is

Speaker 14 busy self-imploding because of the judge. And it's objectively less important than the Georgia case.
But what I did not think about in connection with those

Speaker 14 instincts was that,

Speaker 14 you know, those are the cases that are really democratically important,

Speaker 14 but this is the case that's all about us.

Speaker 14 And why did we, not we as a group of people, but we as a society, elect Donald Trump because he is a celebrity and we are obsessed with these celebrity culture things. What is this case about?

Speaker 14 This case is about self-described alpha males paying off porn stars through these greaseball collections of information brokers.

Speaker 14 And when you deal with Donald Trump, that's the culture that you're dealing with. And we allowed that to

Speaker 14 infect the presidency, to overtake the presidency, for the presidency to become a creature of that culture in a fashion that, you know, we should have occasion to reflect on.

Speaker 14 And I do think this case is an occasion to reflect on that.

Speaker 14 How many steps from the presidency should David Pecker be?

Speaker 12 At least seven.

Speaker 12 Right.

Speaker 14 Like a lot, but he was none.

Speaker 14 He was in the White House, right?

Speaker 14 What are the circumstances in which presidents should be signing reimbursement checks for their fixers to pay off their porn stars in the White House?

Speaker 14 The more I watch the case, the more I think, okay, is this the case I want? No.

Speaker 14 Is this the case I think reflects the highest, most important questions that the Donald Trump presidency raised?

Speaker 12 No.

Speaker 14 Is this the case we freaking deserve? Because we asked for a presidency that was like the dirty.com presidency. And so we got it.

Speaker 14 And now we have a case about the dirty.com and the National Inquirer and, you know, a bunch of other publications that I've never heard of. Yeah, we deserve this.

Speaker 12 We're aligned on this. Again, obviously, I don't think it's as important as his attempted coup.
I wasn't that thrilled about this case to begin with, but like, we deserve it. He deserves it.

Speaker 12 And sorry, in our grand battle to defeat Donald Trump, should he go down because he lied about his reimbursement checks to his fixer about the rapey

Speaker 12 hotel room encounter with Stormy Daniels. Like, you know, no, I wish it was on something that had a little bit more substance, but it is what it is.
He did that.

Speaker 12 And it seems to me like he's on track to conviction, which leads me to my next question. Is he on track to conviction?

Speaker 12 I mean, you can't get inside of the jurors' heads, but I mean, as you assess these testimonies, maybe a better way to ask that question is,

Speaker 12 over the past few days, Has it seemed to you more likely that we're heading towards a conviction? And if so, which testimonies were the ones that you think were the most powerful in that regard?

Speaker 14 Well, so the critical testimonies are neither Stormy Daniels nor Hopix. Those are the ones that generated all the headlines, and rightly so.

Speaker 14 I actually found Stormy Daniels' testimony really moving and upsetting for a lot of reasons.

Speaker 12 Thank you for saying that. Actually, let's just pause on that because I had a disagreement yesterday with Sarah.

Speaker 12 I hate disagreeing with Sarah, but on the next level podcast, I disagree with Sarah, who I totally get.

Speaker 12 This isn't even a critique of her, but like she felt a little icky about the stormy stuff and the stormy stuff is leaking out you know and and i i think maybe i read more of the transcript and i because i also was felt moved by it i think she was put in a horrific situation and has not maybe acted perfectly over the past five years who has eight years in the ways in which she talked about donald trump but like

Speaker 12 you know i mean she was pressured to essentially accuse him of rape like gloria allred in a situation that was rape adjacent and she declined to do that that because she felt like it was consensual.

Speaker 12 And, like, I was just sort of moved by the transcript of her discussing that encounter and how gross it was, and how challenging it was for her.

Speaker 12 But, was that what you were referencing, or is there something else?

Speaker 14 Yeah, principally. I also think this is a person who's had a very difficult life and

Speaker 14 has been manipulated by people who

Speaker 14 some of them had

Speaker 14 fiduciary obligations to her, particularly Michael Avenatti, who got her in an enormous amount of trouble and are, by the way, now in prison for it, right?

Speaker 14 I mean, this is a person who's been quite exploited by a number of people, including, but not limited to, Donald Trump.

Speaker 14 And this is not a person who, at least by her testimony, went out seeking a relationship with Donald Trump.

Speaker 14 She was seeking to be, you know, if you believe her story, to avoid a dinner with people that she didn't want to see and to maybe get on the apprentice.

Speaker 14 She finds herself in a situation that maybe she should have avoided, but, you know, that's actually not how we judge people.

Speaker 14 And then has had her life kind of dominated by it ever since in this way that sometimes she is handled effectively and sometimes she's handled less than entirely honorably, frankly.

Speaker 14 She's definitely told different things to different people at different times and asked for money for the story to be true or not true.

Speaker 14 Or on the other hand, you know, this is somebody who had the power of a lot of celebrity culture, including the celebrity culture-dominated presidency arrayed against her and you know, powerful people who wanted to destroy her, one of whom she was sitting across from the other day.

Speaker 14 And I have to say, I looked at that just at like, leave aside the case for a minute. I think she is more sinned against than sinning.

Speaker 14 And among the high-profile group of people whose conduct is at issue in this case, I would

Speaker 14 much rather have a beer with her than anybody else. I'd much rather invite her to my house for dinner than David Pecker.

Speaker 12 Get the fuck out of my house.

Speaker 12 Or than her lawyer, Keith Davidson, or than her lawyer, Michael Avenatti.

Speaker 14 And like, she has to obviously take some responsibility for her some of her choices in life, which have not been ideal, like associating with those people and doing business with those people.

Speaker 14 You know, when I'm watching her testify about what happened between her and Donald Trump, I don't have any doubt about like

Speaker 14 who the good guy in that story is.

Speaker 12 Right. No.
No, we are Team Stormy on this podcast, just like we are Team Monica. Talked about that a while back.

Speaker 12 Anyway, I derailed us for that, but I think that's important. And I was interested to hear your first, you know, first person account of that.

Speaker 12 But back to where you were going, which is which of the testimonies, we'll end with Hope Hicks, but which were the other testimonies that you thought were the most powerful, at least with regards to the verdict.

Speaker 14 Okay, so the most important testimony of the week is the one that people talk about the least, and it is the testimony of the controller of the Trump organization, a guy guy named Jeff McConney.

Speaker 14 You know, the story in this case has two halves, right? There's the story about paying off Stormy Daniels and paying off Karen McDougal, the catch-and-kill story.

Speaker 14 And then there's the story that's the actual crime, which is the falsification of business records by way of covering that up.

Speaker 14 Jeff McConney delivers almost the entirety of the second half of the story. He does it as a Trump loyalist.

Speaker 14 He worked for the Trump organization basically his whole career. He seems to have no animus against Donald Trump, seems to be fond of him.

Speaker 14 And he lays out from beginning to end how they set up a system to reimburse Michael Cohen for the transaction with Stormy Daniels and with a bunch of other stuff. And he does it in a fashion that the

Speaker 14 defense really did not lay a glove on in cross-examination, didn't even really try.

Speaker 14 There is just no way you can come away with that testimony with the sense that the accounting of this matter on the part of the Trump organization was on the up and up, right?

Speaker 14 You can talk about, well, did Trump know that Alan Weiselberg had directed him to do this? Who knew what? I suppose you can argue about that.

Speaker 14 But that there was a reimbursement scheme with respect to Cohen

Speaker 14 vis-a-vis the payment to Stormy Daniels is simply not a matter of reasonable dispute.

Speaker 14 And I would be shocked if the jury had not internalized that as a result of both his testimony and the testimony that immediately followed him, the accounts payable woman at Trump Tower, whose name is Deborah Tarasoff, who had the great line asked to explain the difference between accounts payable and accounts receivable.

Speaker 14 She said, accounts receivable, it's someone owes you money, you get it, it's coming in. Accounts payable, they send you a bill, you send the money out.

Speaker 14 That's the Trump organization accounting practices.

Speaker 12 You mentioned something during that about the poor cross here. I asked you last week what the Trump defense was at this point.
You gave an answer. I'm still not sure I understand it.

Speaker 12 So, you know, now we have another week's worth of cross-examinations. What kind of defense do you think that they're building at this point?

Speaker 14 All right. So first of all, I want to say that 12 hours after we had that conversation, the defense cross-examination of Keith Davidson happened.

Speaker 14 The lawyer who I described as, hey, he's not nearly as sleazy as I thought he was going to be, right? He seems like just a lawyer.

Speaker 12 Whoa, was I wrong.

Speaker 14 So this is why you never talk about somebody before the cross-examination is done. I screwed up.
Maya culpa, mea maxima culpa. This guy is an unbelievable scumbag.

Speaker 12 You believe in the goodness of people.

Speaker 14 You know, somebody sits on the stand, takes the oath, and says things, and I'm like, okay, this seems like a good guy.

Speaker 12 Well, we need to have some of us to deal a little bit more in the scummy side of society there with you behind your shoulder being like, wait, us, I don't know about this.

Speaker 12 Actually, this guy, this guy reminds me of, anyway. All right, so we'll set that aside.
Go ahead, continue.

Speaker 14 So the defense is still the same. The defense is kind of has three prongs.
One is that this was an extortion scheme by Stormy Daniels, not an election interference matter.

Speaker 14 But if it was an election interference matter, what's wrong with that? That's called democracy. NDAs are perfectly legal.

Speaker 12 There's nothing, no problem there if it was.

Speaker 14 And by the way, it was, you know, Melania would have been very hurt.

Speaker 12 Was any progress made in the cross of Stormy on that prong of the defense?

Speaker 14 No. So the cross of Stormy has only really just begun.
I mean, there's been been like an hour and a half of it.

Speaker 12 It will take up most of the day today.

Speaker 14 So that's the first prong of the defense. I don't think they've made a lot of headway in that, but they definitely got David Pecker to admit some things.

Speaker 14 They got Keith Davidson to admit a lot of things, including that he, you know, was responsible for the Hulk Hogan sex tape and, you know, basically every sex tape you've ever heard of.

Speaker 16 that's ever been made public.

Speaker 12 He's behind it. Not a big sex tape, man.
I hope Keith Davidson better not have been behind that leak that targeted poor Jamal Murray. Don't Google that.
Don't Google the Jamal Murray leak.

Speaker 14 It didn't show up in the discussion, I just want to say, but if like, don't bet against Keith Davidson being involved. If there's a sex tape, he's probably made some money from it.

Speaker 14 You know, a $2 million payout from Charlie Sheen

Speaker 14 that he doesn't remember. I mean, the guy's a piece of work.
They've done a pretty good job at setting up like Trump was being extorted by some nasty people. There's other arguments, too.

Speaker 14 The second component is the idea that Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels are people you shouldn't believe. That's the main thing they're trying to get from this cross.

Speaker 12 The problem with that is that they haven't settled on a you shouldn't believe them because I didn't do it, or you shouldn't believe it because I did do it, but their story is lies about this, that, or the other, right?

Speaker 14 Correct. And also, I mean, they're throwing a lot of spaghetti at the wall, and

Speaker 14 the same piece of spaghetti doesn't have to stick for each juror, right? They only need one juror.

Speaker 12 Got it, fair.

Speaker 14 So the third component, which is the one that I think the accountants really took apart, is the idea that sometimes a payment for legal services is just a payment for legal services.

Speaker 14 Michael Cohen was the president's personal lawyer. And I think it is very difficult to listen to these two,

Speaker 14 one accounts payable woman and one controller and come away from it not thinking oh there was a scheme here to pay Michael Cohen back $420,000 and spread it out over a year and disguise it as legal fees and and so I think like to the extent that they're relying on that third component of the defense I think that got damaged this week all right closing out with hope hicks she cried I guess she did cry why I couldn't get good context from these stories.

Speaker 12 Like, was she crying because she still loves Donald Trump and she feels like she's betraying him or because just the stress of the situation and the memories or what's happening?

Speaker 14 It was genuinely unclear to me.

Speaker 14 It happened right after

Speaker 14 the direct examination had ended. The cross-examination starts.

Speaker 14 And she's asked a perfectly pedestrian set of questions, and she goes to pieces.

Speaker 14 So it's clearly more about about what happened at the end of the direct examination than what happened at the beginning of the cross, which was friendly.

Speaker 14 I think the answer is, I'm not sure about this, that

Speaker 14 she found very upsetting the last line of questioning. And I got to say, thinking about it afterwards, I understand why she would find it upsetting.

Speaker 14 It's not a betrayal of Trump, but it's an extremely unflattering piece of information that she gave up.

Speaker 14 And that was that in 2018, in the White House, he says to her, first of all, acknowledges that Michael Cohen gave this payment, says to her that he did it out of the goodness of his heart.

Speaker 14 He wasn't directed to, he wasn't, he just did it on his own, and

Speaker 14 that Trump regarded it as a a real show of loyalty and something that was meaningful to him. So that was the first thing.

Speaker 14 So revealing that he, in fact, knew that Cohen had done this, at least in 2018. The second component of that conversation is

Speaker 14 that he says, and this is, I think, the part that is, I mean, no single piece of information is going to decide this case, but this is an important piece of information.

Speaker 14 He says, I'm glad he did it because I'd rather be dealing with this now, meaning in the White House, now here, than in November and October of 2016.

Speaker 14 And she's real clear about this, and she's looking right at him when she says it. And that's the election interference component of it, right? We successfully kept.

Speaker 12 Just to be clear for people trying to understand that. So we're in 2018 at this point.

Speaker 14 In the White House, in 2018.

Speaker 12 He's already won. And he's saying, I'm glad we're dealing with this now, not in October of 2016, right before the election, when it could have damaged me.

Speaker 14 Right. In other words, Michael Cohen did this.

Speaker 14 He claims, even in this conversation, not at my direction, on his own, out of the goodness of his heart, however much goodness there may be in his heart. He did this.

Speaker 14 And I am glad he did it. And I'm glad he did it because we're dealing with this now having won rather than this having affected the outcome of the election.

Speaker 14 And so if you think about whenever you listen to testimony in a criminal case, you never listen to the testimony itself alone.

Speaker 14 You should always have in your head the way the prosecutor or the defense lawyer is going to talk about that testimony in closing arguments, right?

Speaker 14 And so, here, you're going to say, this is Donald Trump admitting to his most trusted communications aide that this was an election interference effort. It was intended that way.

Speaker 14 And in his judgment, it worked and it was successful. And I think that's the significance of Hope Picks's testimony.
And she does that.

Speaker 14 The prosecution turns her over to the defense. He asks her a perfectly pedestrian question and she went to pieces.

Speaker 12 I can't say I feel a lot of empathy for Hope.

Speaker 12 Okay, tough titties. Tough titties.
Empathy doesn't enter into it.

Speaker 14 But there is like one empathy issue with respect to Hope.

Speaker 14 that you should think about, which is that the jury is going to find her a very appealing witness.

Speaker 14 You know, none of the reasons that you, and for that matter, I, would say a thing like, I'm not going to spend any time having empathy for Hope Hicks. None of that is on display in the court.

Speaker 14 She comes in, she's extremely polished. She's in all the ways that we know Hope Hicks to be polished, right? She's very communicative with both the defense and the prosecution.

Speaker 14 She's not belligerent. She's a good witness.

Speaker 14 And so you say if you're a minimally involved person who has only a limited sense of all this, which is what you have to be in order to be a juror in this case, and you see Hope Hicks saying that, your empathy is not where Tim Miller's empathy is here, and that this is a very appealing person on her face.

Speaker 12 Okay, finally, just briefly,

Speaker 12 versus where what your perception was of the likelihood that a guilty verdict is rendered at the beginning of the trial versus right now. Do you feel about the same, More likely, less likely.

Speaker 12 I mean, obviously, you can't get in the head of these jurors, but just your impressions of that.

Speaker 14 I always thought the case was likely to be pretty strong. So I'm not super surprised at its strength.
There are areas where it's stronger than I expected it to be, particularly in the forensics area.

Speaker 14 The accounting forensics are really, really bad for Trump. And there are also areas that I still actually think we need to learn something from the rest of the case.

Speaker 14 And so the areas that the case is weakest so far are on Trump's personal direction of either side of the stories, either his personal direction to Cohen to make this payment or his personal direction to Alan Weiselberg to reimburse the payment.

Speaker 14 The idea that the payment happened, that it was corrupt, that there was an effort to interfere with the election, that is quite well established.

Speaker 14 The idea that the reimbursement was done in a fashion that violated New York law, that's pretty clearly done.

Speaker 14 Getting Donald Trump's fingerprints on both of those things is going to be the tough part of the case for the prosecution.

Speaker 12 Especially because they're such tiny little fingers. Okay, Ben Wittis, thank you so much for coming back onto the Borg podcast.

Speaker 14 Anytime, man.

Speaker 12 Wis is our man in Amsterdam, our man at the Trump trial. We'll be having him back here again soon.
Make sure to go check out that Lawfare podcast. I'll put it in the show notes.

Speaker 12 We'll be back on the other side with Congressman Roe Conna out of California.

Speaker 14 You were the sunshine, baby.

Speaker 14 Whenever you smile,

Speaker 14 but I call you stormy

Speaker 14 today.

Speaker 1 California has millions of homes that could be damaged in a strong earthquake.

Speaker 4 Older homes are especially vulnerable to quake damage, so you may need to take steps to strengthen yours.

Speaker 6 Visit strengthenyourhouse.com to learn how to strengthen your home and help protect it from damage.

Speaker 9 The work may cost less than you think and can often be done in just a few days.

Speaker 10 Strengthen your home and help protect your family.

Speaker 11 Get prepared today and worry less tomorrow.

Speaker 6 Visit strengthenyourhouse.com.

Speaker 13 There's nothing like sinking into luxury. Anibay sofas combine ultimate comfort and design at an affordable price.

Speaker 13 Anibay has designed the only fully machine washable sofa from top to bottom. The stain-resistant performance fabric slip covers and cloud-like frame duvet can go straight into your wash.

Speaker 13 Perfect for anyone with kids, pets, or anyone who loves an easy-to-clean, spotless sofa. With a modular design and changeable slip covers, you can customize your sofa to fit any space and style.

Speaker 13 Whether you need a single chair, love seat, or a luxuriously large sectional, Annabe has you covered. Visit washable sofas.com to upgrade your home.

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Speaker 12 Add a little

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Speaker 12 I'm delighted to be here with Democratic Congressman Roe Khanna. His district is located in my old neck of the woods, Silicon Valley.
Thanks for coming on the Bulwark podcast, sir.

Speaker 12 I've been wanting to do this for a while.

Speaker 16 I've been wanting to come on for a while, so great to be on.

Speaker 12 Great. Our initial plan here when we first started emailing was to have a broad, high-minded conversation about the state of the Democratic Party and populism.

Speaker 12 And hopefully we'll have some time for some of that. But the news gods have intervened, unfortunately.
So we've got to talk news first.

Speaker 12 I'd like to start with the President's interview with CNN last night. He said that if Israel invades the city of Rafah, the U.S.

Speaker 12 will stop supplying it with artillery shells, bombs for fighter jets and other offensive weapons. You'd voted against aid for Israel, I think, on these same grounds.

Speaker 16 So why don't you talk about his announcement and what you think about what the president said last night on CNATERANING THE Well, the president basically affirmed what 37 Democrats who voted no on offensive weapons to Netanyahu were saying.

Speaker 16 What we were saying is you can't keep arming Netanyahu with offensive weapons if he's going to Rafah and defy the United States and where we continue to have massive civilian loss of life.

Speaker 16 So the president's position now is consistent with the 37 Democrats who voted no, and I think it's a welcome shift.

Speaker 12 Well, there are more Democrats that have voted yes. Richie Torres last night says America cannot claim that its commitment to Israel is ironclad and then proceed to withhold aid.

Speaker 12 Federman said it was deeply disappointing. They weren't alone.
There are some others.

Speaker 12 Like, what do you say to your colleagues who are arguing that this is sending the wrong signal to our ally that faced an attack, a devastating attack from Hamas and who still holds hostages?

Speaker 16 Well, it was a devastating, atrocious terrorist attack that I unambiguously condemned. And then I said Israel had the right to get Hamas's perpetrators who committed October 7th.

Speaker 16 And Israel systematically degraded Hamas, but by the end of November, by Thanksgiving, they had degraded a lot of Hamas's military capability.

Speaker 16 The question now is, how are you going to get the hostages back?

Speaker 16 And how are you going to end the loss of life and have some security in that region?

Speaker 16 My view, and not just my view, but many of the Israeli hostages themselves and people protesting there, is that the best way to get the hostages back is to get a deal for a ceasefire.

Speaker 16 I think going into Rafah precludes that deal. I think it puts the hostage families at risk.
And I also think that you're never going to be able to eliminate Hamas. They've got 20 to 30,000 fighters.

Speaker 16 You can degrade Hamas, but to have new governance there, you need a permanent ceasefire. And then the Saudis and UAE and Egypt and Israel working with the Palestinians on new governance.

Speaker 16 That to me is in Israel's long-term security. It may not be Netanyahu's vision, but I think it is the vision of probably more of the labor tradition in Israel.

Speaker 12 The pushback to that that I've seen from some on the right, people that I think are acting in good faith on this, like our friend David Fromm from the podcast, he'd argue that taking this leverage away from Israel, you know, trying to put clamps on the different types of weaponry they can use, the different types of offensive actions they can use, actually

Speaker 12 doesn't limit the war, it prolongs it, was Frome's argument. The others have said that it makes it harder to get less likely that the hostages will be released.

Speaker 12 It makes Hamas feel that they have more resolve, they can survive for longer. What's your pushback to that? Like this idea that this is showing weakness and that it might actually prolong the war?

Speaker 16 Well, we've tried the other way, and it's gone on seven months. I mean, we've given Netanyahu a blank check.
The war hasn't ended, the hostages haven't come home.

Speaker 16 So obviously, that way it hasn't worked. The crux of the disagreement, I mean, the crux of the disagreement, I don't think there's any moral equivalence of it.
Hamas is a terrorist organization.

Speaker 16 I strongly disagree with Netanyahu, but Israel is a democratic country. There's no moral equivalence.
What Hamas did was wrong on October 7th.

Speaker 16 But the crux of the disagreements of the negotiations is that Hamas wants a permanent end to the war. Netanyahu is saying, no, even if we get the hostages, we want to be able to go into Rafah.

Speaker 16 The language that was used was sustainable calm, trying to appease both sides.

Speaker 16 But the essence of the decision that we have to make is, will Netanyahu be willing to live with an end to the war, having destroyed a lot of Hamas's capability if he gets the hostages back?

Speaker 16 I think that it makes sense in this context and then to have a diplomatic effort to find new governance, recognizing that not everyone would have been brought to accountability.

Speaker 16 And it's a difficult decision. But that's really the issue.
And philosophically, I think that now or the people on the right would say, no,

Speaker 16 that's not enough. We need to get the Hamas leadership out.

Speaker 12 You had a conversation at the University of Wisconsin with a broad array of students about the war. I want to play a little bit from that conversation and get your thoughts on the other side.

Speaker 15 Gaza is not a huge place, but Hamas could have told all of its civilians.

Speaker 14 To go what?

Speaker 15 To go to southern, to go to Southern Gaza. The worst massacre in all of Gaza in six months was in Rafah, the safe place that they told her.
Now they're saying they want to invade Rafah.

Speaker 15 Where should they go now? Back to the north where they're still bombing? What to you is the uncrossed line? It easily could have been.

Speaker 15 Could have been my family or some of my best friends that were kidnapped from Israel. What would the line be for me to say, you guys didn't keep them?

Speaker 15 I have no idea. Civilians are dying.
At what point is it on Hamas to say, okay, we give up, have your hostages back, we'll dismantle?

Speaker 15 You can't expect diplomacy from people living under the thumb of occupation. That's never their response.

Speaker 15 You know, everybody's using Hamas as a kind of justification to do all that kind of stuff that's happened. But what happened before Hamas took over?

Speaker 12 How were those people treated?

Speaker 15 I was aghast at this government before the war started.

Speaker 15 It's not one that represents my sense of Judaism, my sense of Zionism, meaning the state of Israel has a right to exist, that there should be a Palestinian state.

Speaker 12 But does anyone want to weigh in on Biden's policies and the critiques? The sooner there's a ceasefire, the more lives are being saved.

Speaker 15 So the fact that he's very against that is very hope to see. I have Jewish friends that are left-leaning, that have voted Democrat, that will no longer vote for Joe Biden because

Speaker 15 they feel a trade. They feel like he doesn't represent their interests in the best way anymore.

Speaker 12 I guess before we get into the specifics of what the kids were arguing, what was your impression of that conversation? It seems like you had a pretty wide-ranging ideological group there.

Speaker 12 And, you know, we hear that these conversations are getting shut down on campuses. So, so, what was your experience?

Speaker 16 I was quite inspired and impressed by the students. I mean, remember, there are 4,000 campuses and colleges in the United States.

Speaker 16 We hear about the stuff going on in Michigan and Columbia, but in many classrooms, I think there are more types of conversations like the ones I had.

Speaker 16 And if people look at the clip, it's not just the students who are all supportive of Palestine. The Jewish American students there are very, very supportive of what the Israeli war cabinet is doing.

Speaker 16 They blame Hamas clearly for the conflict, but there is a respectful, passionate exchange of ideas. One of the Jewish students talks about losing a cousin on October 7th.

Speaker 16 She is moved when a Palestinian student says every day she calls her mother to find out how many more family members of hers died in Gaza.

Speaker 16 Now, do I think that there was some kumbaya moment and they have a future Middle East plan? No. But it's breaking down some of the barriers.

Speaker 16 It's figuring out how we talk to each other so that the conflicts in the Middle East aren't splitting us further in America.

Speaker 12 I thought it was really moving and enjoyed the whole audio. People can go find it.

Speaker 12 We'll put the full video in the show notes for people that wanted more.

Speaker 12 One thing I've, people have been critical of me from the left and talking about these protests is we're a bunch of Never Trumpers, right? We come from the background of we were in a party where

Speaker 12 there was a group of people that we thought were, you know, the crazy ones that we were keeping down in the basement that were, you know, making cruel, bigoted, dehumanizing arguments at times.

Speaker 12 We, you know, enabled that, I think, in a lot of ways. And I look back with that, with regret that I didn't speak out about that.

Speaker 12 And so I feel like I come to this discussion of the campus protests with that baggage or that perspective, however you want to look at it.

Speaker 12 And I'm frustrated that I see people on the progressive left sometimes making the same mistake, where there were students in that conversation who had very strong disagreements with Israel's actions, but were making substantive arguments.

Speaker 12 But there are a lot of people on these campuses that are making arguments about how Intifada is justified, you know, anti-Semitic arguments, eliminationist arguments.

Speaker 12 Do you think that folks that have your point of view more progressive on this issue have like an obligation to do some self-policing on that? Yes.

Speaker 16 In fact, I'm going to be giving a major speech. I'm getting a award at the Arab-American Civil Rights League on May 16th in Dearborn, Michigan, in front of 500 to 700 Muslim and Arab Americans.

Speaker 16 And one of the first lines in my speech is going to be: I would give the same remarks here as I would give at the ADL or the AJC.

Speaker 16 And I talk about how there should be zero tolerance and a strict rejection of any anti-Semitism or Islamophobia, but certainly chanting Zionists don't deserve to live or globalize the intifada or

Speaker 16 this space is not open to Jews. It has chilling reminiscence of anti-Semitism in European and American universities and should be condemned.

Speaker 16 That doesn't mean that we can't recognize the broader sentiment of young people who are out there because they say too many people dying and they want an end to the war.

Speaker 16 And at their best, they represent the anti-Vietnam, anti-apartheid, anti-Iraq war protests.

Speaker 16 But one of the things I talk about is Satyagraha, which my grandfather spent four years in jail alongside Gandhi's independence movement.

Speaker 16 And Gandhi and Satyagraha, which was about truth, force, and nonviolence, talks about having to speak out about your own side's bigotry first and loudly. And King did that, Lewis did that.

Speaker 16 So I think that the protesters lose a moral force when they aren't condemning obvious bigotry on their own side.

Speaker 12 That's refreshing. I concur with that.
What is going to be your message in Dearborn? You know, you hear a lot.

Speaker 12 It's hard for me to kind of grasp how much of this is social media performance and how much of this is real.

Speaker 12 But, you know, there's a lot of buzz that Joe Biden's losing altitude, that there's folks in the Arab American community that are going to refuse to vote for him despite the just a plain, obvious fact that the person that proposed the Muslim ban would be a worse option for the country and for the Muslim community.

Speaker 12 Hey, how do you assess that threat? Does Joe Biden have a big threat in that community?

Speaker 12 And if so, you know, how are you speaking to folks in that community about why they should come around and despite their reservations? Well, there are two points.

Speaker 16 The larger point of what I'm going to say is that we need a new political dialogue here and that we do need protests to call out our own side so that we don't devolve into violent, toxic attacks on ethnicity.

Speaker 16 And I think we need to be doing that in places that are not comfortable.

Speaker 16 So I could easily give an anti-Semitism speech to the AJC, but raising some of those issues in Dearborn, I think, is going to have more impact and vice versa on Islamophobia. On Biden himself,

Speaker 16 I say, look, the president is obviously moving. I mean, you may disagree with what he said last night.

Speaker 16 Others will agree, but it would be hard-pressed to think that the protests and the progressive left and the Muslim and Arab American community and people critical of his policies haven't had an impact.

Speaker 16 I mean, look at where he was seven months ago. Look at where he is today.
His language yesterday was echoed, the exact statement the 37 Democrats who voted against the offensive aid put out.

Speaker 16 So I would say, look, look, with Biden, you at least have impact. Do you think Donald Trump would care at all about your sentiments on Gaza or civil rights in this country? Absolutely not.

Speaker 16 And we have to recognize the stakes and be pragmatic.

Speaker 12 Is that true, though? Like, do you think that Biden has moved because of pressure from the left? I'm not sure that that's true.

Speaker 12 I think that he's moved because of the facts on the ground in Israel, frankly, around the world.

Speaker 12 He's been one of the last world leaders to stick by BB unapologetically. And, you know, like you said, things have changed over the last seven months.

Speaker 12 Like, isn't just the reality of the war what has driven his change more than trying to appeal to the political side? Or maybe not. I don't know.
What do you think?

Speaker 16 I don't think it's a crude calculation.

Speaker 16 I don't think he's saying, oh, I need to appease some part of the base, but I think he has heard from lawmakers over and over again, from people in the Arab and Muslim American community, from young people about the toll that is taking place in Gaza, about the loss of human life.

Speaker 16 I think he has been made aware that some of his rhetoric early on didn't have enough empathy for the loss of life of innocence in Gaza.

Speaker 16 And I think there has been a critique that he gave too much of a blank check to Netanyahu. Now, I'm not in his head.

Speaker 16 I can tell you that most politicians aren't immune from public sentiment, and I'm sure it's a combination of the facts on the ground, his conviction, and hearing from people in a democracy.

Speaker 16 Some people may say, well, is that craven? And I said, no, that's what's supposed to happen in a democracy. You're supposed to listen to public sentiment as well.

Speaker 16 Abraham Lincoln said public sentiment is everything.

Speaker 12 One more thing on Biden on this. I don't know what the political calculation is.
I kind of laugh when people are like, he's making political calculations on this.

Speaker 12 And the Biden coalition that he's going to need in November ranges from people that would be like pretty happy for Gaza to be completely leveled, like some

Speaker 12 of the folks in my world, some neo former neocon, anti-Trump types, all the way to people that think that Israel is an apartheid state and would be happy to see the Israeli government dismantled and everywhere in between.

Speaker 12 Like the Biden coalition on this issue

Speaker 12 could not be more divided, could not be more far apart. Like what's he supposed to do?

Speaker 12 How does he think about this issue politically, do you think?

Speaker 16 Of course, I just, if I could just clarify my position, because I'm

Speaker 16 two states and I believe that Israel should exist.

Speaker 12 I was not meaning to lump you in with the dismantled Israeli government part, but you have to admit, there are going to be some of those people that have that view that vote for Joe Biden this year year because he's a better option than Donald Trump.

Speaker 16 Sure. And, you know, I agree with your characterization of the coalition that's going to be with Biden.
I just want to put my stake is I'm sort of center, I would say center left.

Speaker 16 I believe Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish democratic state.

Speaker 16 That is what Zionism means, that why shouldn't the Jewish people have one state if so many other people have the right to self-determination?

Speaker 16 But I am against the occupation in the West Bank and in Gaza and believe there should be a Palestinian state and a two-state solution. Now, easier to say than to implement, but

Speaker 16 that's where Barack and the labor Rabin and Perez's is where I am.

Speaker 16 I guess what I would say is that the biggest thing that the president needs to do, and I know this is hard, is to figure out how to end the war and free the hostages. You don't get raided on a curve.

Speaker 16 You're president of the United States. It's gone on seven months.
I think most people are saying, end it.

Speaker 16 If Burns can't do it, send someone who can. Send Clinton, send Obama, figure out how do we end the war.

Speaker 16 And I think for Biden, the political calculation is how do I get the hostages out and end the war?

Speaker 16 And I think that the challenge, and it's reflected in his approval ratings across the spectrum, is people are just unhappy because there's an ongoing war. People are seeing killing.

Speaker 16 And that's why being president of the United States is the toughest job in the world.

Speaker 12 You voted against the TikTok ban. I did.
Yeah, I'm pretty for the TikTok ban. I don't think that we would let China own NBC, for example.

Speaker 12 So I'm not sure why we should let them own one of the biggest social media platforms in the country. And I care more about the algorithm than I do about the privacy side of things.

Speaker 12 You know, I had somebody on the podcast a couple of weeks ago that said that he thought that part of the motivation behind the TikTok ban was that a lot of folks in Congress were concerned about the anti-Israel sentiment and that that was a motivator.

Speaker 12 I sort of pushed back on that, thought that maybe that was a little conspiratorial. There was a lot of negative feedback from our listeners on this point.

Speaker 12 Then Mitt Romney last week basically says this, like in an interview, like Biz Romney basically says, I know. What do you think about this?

Speaker 16 I put out a TikTok video on Bick Robney's clip that went viral. I mean, it was shocking.

Speaker 16 I mean, Robney basically is like, yeah, we all voted against or for the ban because people were talking too much about Palestinian issues. And I said, that's viewpoint censorship.

Speaker 16 That's exactly why I had first of concerns. Look, if you wanted to have a law say the Chinese government should have zero role in algorithms in America, absolutely.

Speaker 16 Hold people criminally accountable at Oracle or TikTok for any interference with the Chinese government or any foreign government. If you want want to have a law on data privacy, fine.

Speaker 16 If you wanted to stop TikTok from coming in through the CIFIAS process before it became an app, fine.

Speaker 16 But you can't have this app with 170 million Americans and then have Romney say, well, we think 2D Americans are saying things that are pro-Palestine, so now we're going to shut down the app.

Speaker 16 And young people feel like we finally have an app where we have a voice.

Speaker 16 The older generation is saying, go get active. Now we're active.
And now they don't like what we're saying. So they're going to shut us down.

Speaker 16 You know, that's very different than saying, don't go yell anti-Semitic obscenities at your classmates or block Jewish students from getting into the classroom. There should be consequences.

Speaker 16 But come on, you're engaged in speech on TikTok?

Speaker 12 How do you think about the free speech issue?

Speaker 12 I'm directionally for speech, but I just always have to laugh at like the Elons, some of your pals over there. They're like, well, I'm just for unfettered free speech.

Speaker 12 Nobody's for unfettered free speech. Okay.
Like anybody who's ever been on a message board online knows that you have to have moderation.

Speaker 12 If you don't have moderation, the message board is going to turn into porn and ad hominem and fake accounts, right?

Speaker 12 There has to be some kind of limiting principle or else, you know, look what happened to Craigslist, right? There's a reason nobody uses Craigslist anymore because everybody on there is a scammer.

Speaker 12 So you have to have some kind of limiting principle. What is it for you? Like, what is the limiting principle on free speech on tech platforms?

Speaker 16 Well, I think there are two different questions. One is, what is the limiting principle on the First Amendment, which is when can the government come in and stop the speech or take it down?

Speaker 16 That's a higher bar that I think has to be the incitement to violence or illegal conduct. But then there's something below that, which is a moderation on a technology platform.

Speaker 16 And there I think you should have reasonable standards of not engaging in religious or bigotry or ethnic bigotry, not dehumanizing other people on the platform.

Speaker 16 And I think it's perfectly appropriate for tech companies, and they should should have those standards to monitor conversation.

Speaker 16 You know, if it was that easy, that we could just have unambiguous, unrestricted speech, and sort of the world would be better. We would never have needed a political philosophy.

Speaker 16 I mean, well, just everyone talks, everything will be better.

Speaker 16 No, I mean, we created town halls and institutions, and Congress may not be perfect because we have to think about how do you talk to each other and listen to each other and resolve difference.

Speaker 16 And I think there's a tech utopianism that has gone astray where people just think they put up these platforms, let everyone talk, and somehow democracy will be better.

Speaker 16 And what we're seeing, oftentimes, it's not. It's worse.

Speaker 12 Do you see that in your personal relationships? I mean, if everybody in the Democratic House, at least by reputation, you're their representative.

Speaker 12 So you talk to Elon, you talk to some of these, you know, tech titans. It does feel like there's been a radicalization over the past few years in this crowd in a way that's pretty alarming.

Speaker 12 I mean, there was a puck reported that there's a meeting between Musk and Sachs and some of these other folks about supporting Trump. What underlies all this? Like, these people

Speaker 12 have the most influence, the most wealth of any category of people in the history of the world. Like, what are they so angry about?

Speaker 12 Can you provide any insight into why we're seeing the kind of the right-wing folks in Silicon Valley kind of go down a radicalization pipeline? Or am I overstating it, do you think, maybe?

Speaker 16 95% are still very supportive of progressives and Democrats. Remember, you know, I represent that district and I co-chair Bernie Sanders' campaign, and I still get a lot of support.

Speaker 16 So it's not that it's all gone right-wing.

Speaker 16 But I will say that there are some of the most prominent voices, Elon, Mark Andreessen, Dick Sachs, others, who have gone more to the right. And the question then is, why and how?

Speaker 16 Some of it has been a critique on foreign policy where they think that the America has been too involved overseas. You know, I disagree with some of them on Ukraine, but there's...

Speaker 12 This is ridiculous.

Speaker 12 You can't alibi them on this. David Sachs was for the Iraq war.

Speaker 12 This is not it. That can't be it.
It must be something.

Speaker 16 I'm telling you what they tell. Tell me.

Speaker 12 I'm not defending them.

Speaker 16 And certainly I don't agree with their view on Ukraine. I voted for the Ukraine aid.
Some of it, I think, is this sense that they want to be contrarian.

Speaker 16 I mean, look, when you're a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, you get there by

Speaker 16 going against the grain and thinking about something that's totally different than what everyone else thinks and that may work to be a great entrepreneur and startup probably doesn't work when you're talking about leading the world's greatest democracy so some of it is a contrarianism and some of it is this uh they're concerned with what they call quote-unquote identity politics wokeness they think that there has been a compromise of what they would define as excellence the irony is that the valley itself is filled with diversity it's partly what's allowed in my view excellence and i think that they have a misunderstanding of that.

Speaker 16 And if anything, we've been too exclusive as a valley. We don't have enough women.
We don't enough have African-American, Latino Americans. We need to do a better job.

Speaker 16 You know, they are probably on the opposite side of me on the question of race and gender and some of those issues.

Speaker 12 You got around to it. I'm not giving them credit on the Ukraine thing.
That's contrarianism coming in. I refuse to believe that that's David Sachs's principled position.

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Speaker 12 Let's end with Marjorie. We'll do Marjorie's little dessert at the the end.
All right, so let's do some of our high-minded discussion that we wanted to get into.

Speaker 12 You have pushed for what you call economic patriotism, a new economic patriotism. You have a kind of an agenda associated with that.
I'm about halfway with you on the agenda.

Speaker 12 So, why don't you explain what you mean? That's pretty easy. Yeah, why don't you explain what you mean and then we can hash it out a little bit?

Speaker 16 The central story, I think, of this country has been that for 50 years, you've had wealth pile up in my district, in the hands of people like Elon Musk, in New York, in Seattle.

Speaker 16 And we watched as town after town was hollowed out.

Speaker 16 We lost steel, we lost aluminum, we lost textiles, and no one really cared what was happening to places, unfortunately, like Youngstown, Ohio, or Johnstown, Pennsylvania.

Speaker 16 They were told, go move, go get another job, go become a coder. And slowly, the American dream started to slip away.
And we've gone from 50th in income inequality to 128th. China is at 77.

Speaker 16 European countries are in the 30s.

Speaker 16 And so I think there's this opportunity actually with AI, with technology, to reindustrialize America, to go to places like Johnstown and have modern steel plants, modern factories that bring back high-paying jobs, good jobs that don't all require a college degree, that bring back industry so people in those towns understand those jobs.

Speaker 16 Their parents or grandparents had them. We could be honest that the new steel plants aren't going to have blast furnaces with 4,500 people.

Speaker 16 They may have a thousand people because some of it is going to be robotics and automation, but that's precisely what's allowing us to reindustrialize America, marrying sort of Silicon Valley software ingenuity technology with the industrial know-how of places and to spread the economic opportunity of these new jobs into the Black South, into Latino communities.

Speaker 16 I believe that the economic revitalization of the country can help bring the American dream back, also help bring some commonality to places that don't really talk to each other.

Speaker 12 All right. I'm directionally directionally with you.
Almost everything you said right there, I'm with you on. I worry about a couple of things.

Speaker 12 One is the implementation of it, particularly, you know, from folks on the left. I think that you're already seeing this a little bit.

Speaker 12 I was for the CHIPS Act for a lot of the reasons you just laid out. for

Speaker 12 a lot of the things in the IRA, for the reasons you just laid out.

Speaker 12 Like we're already seeing big delays because of various permitting requirements, varying rules and restrictions, what kind of hiring they can do. I'm for DEI and the woke stuff.

Speaker 12 I'm not with Elon and them on that.

Speaker 12 But I do think that when we're putting, when the government top-down is putting a lot of rules and what is needed for these sorts of factories, that's slowing it down. That's hurting competitiveness.

Speaker 12 It's raising prices.

Speaker 12 What do you say to that critique of the left?

Speaker 12 That it's like, that's a nice directioning thing to say we should build in these communities, but it's hard to actually do it because of all the rules and regulations.

Speaker 16 Look, I think, one, we have done it historically from Hamilton to Lincoln to FDR, so it's possible.

Speaker 12 The administrative state wasn't quite as big back during Hamilton's day, you know? True. There was no CEQA.

Speaker 16 And I certainly won't defend all of CEQA in California. The challenge is, I look, I help write the chips at SciTech, so that's one I know well because I worked with Schubert Young on it.
And I know

Speaker 16 Intel very well, which is in my district in Gelsinger. And here was what they would tell you: the two delays there.

Speaker 16 They wouldn't say it's permitting, though I'm all for smart expediting of permitting in key areas.

Speaker 16 They would say the two things were that it took commerce almost a year to give out the money because there were so many red tape forms of what you had to fill out.

Speaker 16 And the bureaucracy was huge, and the bureaucracy actually made it. So you had to be a multinational corporation.

Speaker 16 And there were so many lawyers involved that were so scared that if they gave the money and something went wrong, that it would be the next Solyndra.

Speaker 16 So I think we need a better, more efficient way of getting the resources out to partner with the private sector. And then the second thing is the workforce.

Speaker 16 I mean, the biggest obstacle to doing this is having actually

Speaker 16 the workforce ready to be able to implement it. Some of it requires immigration as well.

Speaker 12 Now you're speaking my language. Now you're speaking my language.

Speaker 16 You know, I mean, if we've offshored the chips industry to Taiwan, and the reality is there are a lot of Taiwanese who understand that process, we need some of those folks to help in implementing the industrialization.

Speaker 16 And, you know, of course, we probably want to think about what the relationship is with labor. An American company has a better understanding.

Speaker 16 TSMC has struggled in Arizona, partly because they had no basis, no understanding of how to work with labor. And so, of course, we do things differently here than other companies.

Speaker 16 But I think those expectations should be set right in the beginning.

Speaker 16 All that to say is, though, it's not a critique of the Biden administration because they're trying to do something that hasn't been done in 40, 50 years.

Speaker 16 The CHIPS Act actually was an idea for Trump administration. Trump just doesn't even realize enough to take credit for it.

Speaker 16 It was this guy, Keith Crouch, in the undersecretary of secretary of state who came up with the idea. So I think what we need to do is learn from these experiences and get better.

Speaker 12 What about the more free market side of this? That, sure, globalization has hollowed out certain communities, but quality of life overall has improved. You know, boats have been lifted.

Speaker 12 People are annoyed with inflation already. Tariffs limiting imports from countries with cheaper labor is going to make everything more expensive for everybody.
What's your pushback on that argument?

Speaker 16 Well, look, the quality of life has certainly improved for people in China and other parts of the world, which is not a bad thing.

Speaker 16 I mean, when you tell the story historically that it's lifted the boats of a million people.

Speaker 12 Even in America, though. Even in America.
I mean, I can, I needed this little dongle here for my new microphone. And, you know, I called up Amazon.com.
It was here in about 12 hours.

Speaker 12 That's pretty nice. It cost about $4.

Speaker 12 That would not have been the case, you know, in 1960.

Speaker 16 Sure. And for someone like me, I grew up middle class.
I've done well now.

Speaker 16 But the idea that you could have a phone on you where you could watch almost any sports game and you could watch movies, I mean, that was unthinkable.

Speaker 16 And so for certain things, of course, prices have come down.

Speaker 16 But the trade-off has been that for the cost of the picket ticket items, healthcare, childcare, education, those haven't come down. Those have gone up much faster than inflation.

Speaker 16 So consumer goods have gone down. And for a lot of people, the incomes have stagnated.
And this is why a lot of people feel the American dream has slipped away. So, am I for rejecting globalization?

Speaker 16 No.

Speaker 16 Am I for rebalancing it? Yes. Why do we need massive structural trade deficits with China? Why can't we have a situation where we have some self-reliance, but we also have trade and certain things?

Speaker 16 Yes, it helps

Speaker 16 bring down the cost of goods, but other things we want to have, domestic industry. So, I guess I would say it was done in a way that didn't look at the severe impacts.

Speaker 16 And even Larry Summers and others have now had papers saying, you know, we went too fast. We didn't realize what it would do to factory towns.

Speaker 16 And so if there's an over-correction on the other side, I think that'll get us to balance as opposed to worrying that we're going to go into some protectionist mode.

Speaker 12 To be continued on that. What about the political side of this? There's like a what's the matter with Kansas argument that, sure, the Democrats should do this.
Maybe it's the right policy.

Speaker 12 Let's just grant that it's the right policy, put those disagreements aside, Say that politically, though, it's not really going to help.

Speaker 12 That rural America is against the Democrats because of culture issues, because of the media environment that they're in.

Speaker 12 You know, there's a poll out this week that said that only 40% of voters give Biden credit for doing more on infrastructure. 37% give credit to Trump.
Maybe these people just can't be reached.

Speaker 12 What do you say to that?

Speaker 16 Well, I say it wasn't that long ago, up till 2016, that Barack Obama was carrying these places overwhelmingly.

Speaker 16 I guess my view, and maybe it's a naive view, is any single person who has pulled the lever for Barack Hussein Obama is a gettable vote. I start with that premise.

Speaker 16 And then I say, okay, like when Rokana is showing up in Johnstown, Pennsylvania to talk about let's bring modern steel back. Are they going to vote for the Democratic Party because of steel?

Speaker 16 Or am I doing something else? Am I saying to them, look, I get why you're upset. I get why you don't see yourself or your kids in the future of America.

Speaker 16 I understand what brings pride to this this community. I understand what you want for your future and your kids' future.
And I want to work with you to build that common sense of America.

Speaker 16 So the economic can be cultural. It's about showing up, it's about understanding, it's about saying what are the things you want.

Speaker 16 I don't think it's as simplistic as saying, now, if I was just there, like, look, well, let's give you more money, that probably wouldn't work.

Speaker 16 But it's about understanding the hurt of cultural pride in these communities, showing up and saying, I want to earn your vote, and I believe in you.

Speaker 16 And I believe most of the people here are good, decent people who, even though I'm an Indian American of Hindu faith, aren't going to be like Ann Coulter and say, I'll never support you and are more reasonable in America.

Speaker 12 Did you see that? It's crazy. I just saw that before we started, that she went on Vivek's podcast and said she agrees with him and everything, but wouldn't vote for him because he's an Indian.

Speaker 12 I think that she's doing this for attention. So maybe we should give it to her.
But this is like sick stuff. I'm so happy I'm free of these people.
All right. You have another Political Reform Act.

Speaker 12 I'm also halfway with you on it. We're running out of time, so we're just going to stipulate the agreements.
Ban PAC and lobbyist donations. Cool.
Ban members of Congress from becoming lobbyists.

Speaker 12 Now I'm really excited. Ban members of Congress from stock trading.
I don't know. I'm just okay on that one.
And being with Matt Gates, that's a mark against you on that one.

Speaker 12 But we can talk about that one. The enact term limits for member of Congress.
This is where I'm really against you. Have you seen the quality of people that the Republicans are putting up?

Speaker 12 Do we really need to be cycling through quicker?

Speaker 12 I think that right now we have a shortage, just looking at this from an Adam Smith standpoint, we have a shortage of quality supply of good members of Congress.

Speaker 12 I don't know that we need to be restricting the supply. So, give me the counter view to that.

Speaker 16 So, actually, the first few are the ones I'm most passionate about, and maybe that would change it.

Speaker 16 The challenge with if you don't have the banning PAC money, if you don't have campaign finance reform, you basically have these seats for almost life if you're in the same district.

Speaker 16 The economist did a study that the turnover rate in the U.S. Congress was less than European monarchies in terms of the transition of monarchial families in Europe.

Speaker 16 I ran three times to get into Congress. I had to run against an incumbent of my own party.
All three times that I ran, Nancy Pelosi endorsed against me.

Speaker 16 Obama once endorsed against me, even though I worked for him. And I saw how hard it is for someone to break into politics.

Speaker 16 I was able to do it because I had a lot of fortune and breaks coming from Silicon Valley. I had access to capital and access to people and it was still so hard.

Speaker 16 And I guess I've seen that the system is so rigged against people who are outsiders that either you have to unrig the system and with the funding and campaigning or we need some kind of term limits.

Speaker 16 And I'm open to whether that's 12 years, 18 years and having a new generation of talent.

Speaker 16 The final point I'd say is you can't really look at the last 40 years of governance and be like, wow, you know, the greatest moment of American history. I mean, the American dream has has declined.

Speaker 16 We've gotten into a lot of foreign policy blunders. And so I'm not so sure that having a new generation have a shot at politics isn't a good thing.

Speaker 12 This is where my conservative impulse just contrasts with yours, Congressman. You know, you have the progressive, dough-eyed, things could get better.
And I'm like, things could get worse.

Speaker 12 I look at the last 40 years and I'm like, eh, maybe we should just stick. All right.
You're a Burkins. Yeah,

Speaker 12 I'm a little concerned about the potential risks ahead of us.

Speaker 12 Speaking of the potential risks of people coming in, we did have Marjorie Taylor Greene, the great congresswoman from Northwest Georgia, really humiliate herself yesterday on the House floor.

Speaker 12 So we can laugh about that if we want, but I'm curious, you know, you were one of the first to come out and say, no, you'll protect Mike Johnson. You will not vote to vacate.

Speaker 12 Why did you make that decision? What was different about this case than McCarthy for you?

Speaker 16 I actually just thought Mike Johnson did the right thing. I mean, I know it's...

Speaker 16 seems so simple, but I thought here he is under a lot of pressure. And, you know, he had the guts to put out a Ukraine bill for for a vote.

Speaker 16 He separated the bills, Ukraine, Taiwan, Israel, which I thought was actually admirable because it allowed people to vote their conscience. Some of the left said, well, he's putting up an Israel bill.

Speaker 16 I said, he should. You know, that's the whole point of Congress.
We can vote no. We have 37 who voted no, but you shouldn't have these things for a vote.

Speaker 16 And people said, well, what are you getting from him? I said, well, why does everything in politics have to be transactional? They said, well, he worked with Trump to overturn

Speaker 16 the election, and he has these antiquated views on gay rights.

Speaker 16 I said, look, I don't agree with him in a lot of things, but in this case, he did the right thing and he doesn't deserve to be tossed out. And I was really happy to see the overwhelming vote for him.

Speaker 12 Do you sometimes feel a burden that like you guys have to be the grown-ups? There are a lot of examples of the inverse, right?

Speaker 12 Like there aren't a lot of examples of Mike Lawler and these other guys saying,

Speaker 12 you know, I'm just going to do the right thing. I'm going to give Joe Biden an attaboy on this one.
Where are those people? You talk to your Republican colleagues.

Speaker 12 Do they not just disappoint you daily and their unwillingness to kind of do the right thing in a lot of these cases?

Speaker 12 I guess Mike Johnson did on Ukraine, but outside of that, there are not a lot of examples.

Speaker 16 Well, they're all hanging out at a bar with Liz Cheney, wondering what happened to the Republican Party. But there aren't closets.

Speaker 12 Some people say they're closet Liz Cheneys there. And I don't know, you talk to Republicans about as much as anybody in the Democratic caucus.
Is that true? Are there folks that are whispering to you

Speaker 12 after a beer that they wish they could speak out more?

Speaker 16 Less and less so. You know, when the Iron Age is, I got elected the year Donald Trump got elected.
My brother says the year anyone could get elected to anything.

Speaker 16 And I came in, and there were a lot of people then in the halls of Congress who kind of would snicker at Trump, even though he was the president of the United States, be embarrassed, crack jokes.

Speaker 16 And that's much, much, much less today. Donald Trump has a greater grip on the Republican Party today in the House than he did in 2017.

Speaker 16 And that's why it's so scary if the country puts him back into the presidency. And I think that he has a lot more people who are afraid to speak out.

Speaker 16 They've seen the fate of people like Liz Cheney or Adam Kissiker who have spoken out. And you have far, far less dissent, even in private.
I mean, people are very, very careful.

Speaker 16 Look at Mike Gallagher, who was one of the people I was actually very fond of in Congress. He comes out and he makes one decision, which is that he's not going to vote for the impeachment of Maorkis.

Speaker 16 I don't mind saying this. I saw Gallagher in the hallway.
I said, for Mallorcus? You're giving up your career for Maorkis? No one even, you know, no one's talking about the Maorkis or something.

Speaker 16 But he was principled about it.

Speaker 16 Obviously, Majorkis shouldn't be impeached.

Speaker 12 Wait a minute, though. Wait a minute, though.
Wait a minute. Mike Gallagher didn't give up his career for Maorcus.
He gave up his career because he was too wimpy to actually fight for it.

Speaker 12 He could have survived.

Speaker 12 Doesn't that frustrate you? Don't you look at Mike Gallagher and say, what are you doing? Like, we need need people like you. Why are you throwing in the town going to work for Palantir?

Speaker 12 Why don't you actually just stand on your principles and run in a primary? He couldn't have survived a primary because of his Major Gus vote. I don't believe that.

Speaker 12 I think he could have survived a primary.

Speaker 16 I think he could have probably survived.

Speaker 12 It would have been a very, very hard, hard fight. I'm not.
Life is hard. You're in Congress.
You're a public servant. Like, come on.

Speaker 16 I wish he would have fought. I would have supported him.
I don't know if it would have mattered in a primary. I would have supported him.
I think he was a thoughtful Republican.

Speaker 16 But yeah, look, you need more people on that side willing to stand up. And certainly, God forbid, if Trump gets elected, you're going to need that.
And I don't see it. I don't see it.

Speaker 16 And I'm a student of the Prophecy of History, and you look at Lincoln, and one of the geniuses of Lincoln was that he always knew where to push, but where to understand the party and how to navigate that.

Speaker 16 And I'm not comparing my Gallagher to Lincoln, but I thought there are people like Gallagher were operating within the system. They weren't Cheney.
They weren't Kissinger.

Speaker 16 They were doing sort of what they needed to do. And then you would think, okay, they're going to strike to move in the right direction.
And that's the question. I mean, are there those people?

Speaker 16 And they're becoming fewer and fewer.

Speaker 12 Yeah, I'm in the middle of watching some Lincoln stuff right now. And they definitely are not Lincoln.
I do agree with you on that. But yeah, the push and pull, it's interesting.

Speaker 12 It's an interesting time to look at because there are some parallels. Okay, we're over time.
I was supposed to get into medical debt, but I'm not really sure my opinion on it yet.

Speaker 12 You have a new proposal to cancel medical debt. You know, my old instincts are blanching at that, but I want to actually think about it before I offer an opinion.

Speaker 12 So people can read your, you know, put out some material on that. People can read that.
We can maybe come back and have a longer discussion on that, some of the other issues.

Speaker 12 And maybe, I guess my final question is, might you come back because you're thinking about running for a different office? Are you thinking about running for anything else?

Speaker 12 Or are you happy in the House of Representatives?

Speaker 16 Well, it depends if we have future elections, right?

Speaker 12 How worried are you about that?

Speaker 16 Look, I'm hugely hopeful about the American story. You can't not be.

Speaker 16 If you're a son of Indian immigrants, you have a grandfather who spent years in jail with Gandhi, parents immigrated here, born in Philadelphia at the age of 40, get elected to represent Silicon Valley.

Speaker 16 Are you the most wealthy, innovative place in the world? Obviously, you believe in America.

Speaker 16 And I think we are an incredible country that's overcome 250 years of slavery, that overcame tyranny, that overcame the Civil War, that overcame civil rights.

Speaker 16 So do I think that a clownish billionaire entertainer is going to end American democracy? No.

Speaker 16 And one of the things I talk about about leadership is some of the Democratic Party, like, let's have more confidence.

Speaker 16 I mean, if you're in a plane and there's turbulence, do you want your pilot saying, gosh, we're going to crash, we're going to crash, we're going to crash?

Speaker 16 Or do you want your pilot saying we're going to get to the other side and it's going to be a stronger democracy?

Speaker 16 So I think we're going to prevail, but I think that Donald Trump is going to do tremendous damage if he wins to the country in four years and he's going to erode voting rights and make it harder to emerge as a multiracial democracy.

Speaker 12 That's a good place to end. Thank you, Congressman Rokana.
We 100% agree on that. This is great.
Come back soon. We can chop it up a little bit more.

Speaker 12 I really appreciate it having some thoughtful folks in Congress. I don't want you term limited out.
I want you to stay, okay? Because I don't know what's coming after you. I think it's probably worse.

Speaker 12 But thanks so much. We'll come back and we'll see you on the Borg Podcast sometime soon.

Speaker 16 Enjoyed it. Appreciate it.
Thanks.

Speaker 12 All right. We'll be back tomorrow with a Friday weekend edition of the Borg Podcast.
See you all then. Peace.

Speaker 14 You were the sunshine, baby.

Speaker 12 Whenever you smile,

Speaker 12 but I call you stormy today.

Speaker 12 All

Speaker 12 of a sudden, that old rain's falling down,

Speaker 12 and my world is cloudy and grey.

Speaker 12 You've gone away.

Speaker 12 Oh, star

Speaker 12 me.

Speaker 12 Oh, star

Speaker 12 me.

Speaker 12 Bring back that sun

Speaker 12 and day.

Speaker 12 Yesterday's love was like a warm summer breeze,

Speaker 12 but like the weather

Speaker 12 change

Speaker 12 Now things are dreary, baby, and it's windy and cold

Speaker 12 And I spent alone

Speaker 12 in the rain

Speaker 12 Crawling your name

Speaker 12 Oh staring

Speaker 12 Oh staring

Speaker 12 The Bullard Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.

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