Rep. Seth Moulton on Trump Failed Policies

I'm joined by Democratic Congress member Seth Moulton. Congressman, your former Marine, Donald Trump's actions seem to be disproportionately attacking the veteran community, the spouses, members of the armed services, both in terms of the cuts in the federal government where a lot of veterans work, as well as to veterans affairs.
We're learning what 60, 70 thousand jobs could be lost. I want to get your reaction to that.
Yeah. I mean, look, Trump has never liked veterans.
I mean, let's not forget, this is the guy who literally made fun of John McCain for being a POW in Vietnam, who called people who sign up losers. And if you get killed, a sucker.
I mean, this is just who who trump is he dodged the draft himself because he thought someone else less important than him i guess as a as a guy in his early 20s should go to vietnam in his place so it's really not a surprise it shouldn't be a surprise people who believe his rhetoric about how he's tough and you know he's going to restore confidence in the military and things like this. It just doesn't line up with his personality.
So no, it's not surprising that he's cutting the VA and a lot of veterans are going to get hurt. Yeah.
Not a surprise that that's coming from him, but are you surprised that pretty much all of your colleagues have gone, and the Republican side have gone full MAGA at this point, giving standing ovations as Donald Trump talks about conquering Greenland and Panama or giving standing ovations as he talks about revoking the CHIPS Act, which brings a lot of jobs even to their red states. Does that aspect surprise you? They're doing it for one reason, Ben.
It's not MAGA. It's a one-word answer, fear.
That's why they're doing it. They're just cowards.
They're so scared of him. And they say totally different things in private than what they say in public.
So yeah, they're going to get on TV and act like sycophants because they're scared that he'll primary them if they don't.

But then in private, they don't like what he's doing.

They actually do respect veterans.

They do respect NATO.

I sat at the Munich Security Conference just three weeks ago with the likes of Senator Graham, an entirely bipartisan delegation of Republicans and Democrats from the House of Representatives, all reassuring our European allies, all standing by Zelensky, all propping him up, you know, all doing the same thing, singing from the same sheet of music. And then here's the same story.
Trump does something totally crazy that no Republican with an ounce of intelligence or morality can agree with. And about two hours later, you know, sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less.
These Republicans spin some crazy disjointed story to justify what Trump did. And then all of a sudden they're cheering him on.
So it's just utter hypocrisy because they're scared. They're just cowards.
I'll share with you what Trump said earlier in the day. He held one of those Oval Office press conferences where he signed some ridiculous executive order.
I think this one was, he signed an executive order saying that he was great for women. And he goes, I guess I'm great.
I'm signing the order anyway. Then he gets asked all of the questions.
And here he's asked, are you making it U.S. policy that the U.S.
won't defend NATO countries that don't pay? Here, let me show you what he said. Are you going to make that policy, U.S.
policy, that the U.S. wouldn't defend NATO countries that don't pay? Well, I think it's common sense, right? If they don't pay, I'm not going to defend them.
No, I'm not going to defend them. I got into a lot of heat when I said that.
You said, oh, he's violating NATO. And, you know, the biggest problem I have with NATO, I really, you know, I mean, I know the guys very well.
They're friends of mine. But if the United States was in trouble and we called them, we said, we got a problem, France.
We got a problem. A couple of others I won't mention.
Do you think they're going to come and protect us? They're supposed to. I'm not so sure.
Now, you know, from your service to talk to us about it. I mean, these countries did come to us after 9-11, and they're not even required to do so the way we are required by treaty to come to their aid if they get attacked in Europe.
They didn't have to help us in Iraq and Afghanistan, but they did. And it's not surprising that Trump doesn't know that.
I mean, he's not a student of history. But I think more to the point, he doesn't have any sons or daughters who served in the military after 9-11.
You know, they're all about my age. They all could have done their part.

just one of them had signed up, maybe he would know that we served on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan alongside Canadian troops, French troops, United troops from the UK, the Danes,

the Poles, all these NATO countries, not to mention our ally just to the north. And, you know, they lost a lot of lives there.
They didn't need to do that, but they did it because that's what allies do. That's what allies do.
They stand by your side. And, you know, when we went to Iraq, we made we became allies with these Iraqis.
Right. And they were difficult allies.
I mean, there are a lot of times we we disagreed. I've been in a lot of very contentious meetings with Iraqi leaders.
They didn't always pay their bills, but no one on the ground there, even those of us who disagreed with the war, imagine selling them out, selling them out to the enemy, starting to use Al-Qaeda talking points. I mean, that's what Trump's doing.
He's selling Ukraine out. He's selling our NATO allies out.
And he's literally using the talking points of the enemy. Imagine if Roosevelt had started using Hitler talking points.
That's how bad this is. And, you know, I get it.
We don't win elections on national security issues, but Trump is putting this country in danger. He's putting our national security at risk because all across the globe, our allies are saying we can't trust America anymore.
And our adversaries, especially Xi Jinping and China, are saying, yeah, looks like we're getting the green light. We can just walk all over America and its friends no matter where we want.
Well, look, elections are won and lost over the economy. As you posted, Russia's stock market is up.
China's stock is up. America's stocks are down, and it's just more than just the stocks being down.
The Atlanta Federal Reserve saying that GDP will be negative 2.8 to negative 3% in the first quarter, whereas if Donald Trump just put on autopilot former President Biden's economy, it would have been three to 4% GDP growth. Also, you have prices surging.
So that combination of GDP contraction and prices surging is something called stagflation, hasn't happened in 50 years, and is crushing. And then Trump every day, tariff, no tariff, tariff, no tariff.
And he's like watching the market go up and down and then he gets scared. So he pulls the tariffs, which are dangerous.
What are you hearing from your constituents? What are you seeing out there generally the sentiment and the vibes are caused by his economic disarray? Look, I can't remember a time when we've gotten more calls into the office from people who were just scared, desperate, unsure.

We're getting a lot of calls from veterans right now who say we depend on the VA. I mean, I depend on the VA.
I get my healthcare at the VA. I made that promise when I got elected that I'd continue going to the VA and wouldn't just, you know, live off the congressional healthcare plan.
And if they cut 80,000 people from the VA, we're not going to be able to get care. So it's all these concerns.
And yeah, a lot of them are about the economy. Let's not forget, Trump promised that prices would go down on day one.
Well, they've just gone up. That's the one thing that's gone up.
The market's down, consumer confidence is down, investment is down. Everything's down except prices.
Prices are going up. And none of this crazy talk about tariffs, none of the selling out our allies, Ukraine, none of our unwillingness to just uphold our commitment to NATO, which has kept us safe for 75 years.
None of that is lowering prices. Prices are going up.
Let's talk about Doge. Elon Musk pretends that he's not the leader of Doge.
They said some Amy Gleason, who no one's heard of, is actually administrator because Elon doesn't want to have to testify before Congress, before getting into the damage that Doge is causing. Let's just talk about transparency, which is that none of your Republican colleagues are allowing Elon Musk to go before a Doge subcommittee or any committee to actually discuss what he's doing.
I mean, regardless of where someone is on any political issue, you would think at the most basic level, oversight is a thing and you show up before Congress and you talk about it or else you're probably got something to hide. Let's start with transparency and let's talk about the impact you're seeing.
You know, I was in the gym a few weeks ago, bipartisan, you know, bunch of Republicans and one of them said, oh, you know, we're going to a Bible study today. Anyone want to come? And I just said, I really hope you're going to cover hypocrisy.
I hope you go over that in your Bible study group because you guys are really good at it. Again, they're scared.
They're scared. And they don't let hypocrisy get in the way of supporting Donald Trump no matter what he's trying to do.
Yes, everyone knows that Doge is bad. A lot of the calls we're getting and these thousands of calls, you know, 9,000 people showed up at a telephone telehaul I had last week.
I mean, all these people are complaining about Elon Musk and Doge and all the things that are going to be impacted. He's definitely making government less efficient.
It's going to take longer to get appointments at the VA. It's going to take longer to get your license renewed.
I mean, any of this stuff that's impacted by the federal government is going to get less efficient. But we also got to talk about the fact that, I mean, I'm sitting here as a Democrat, who's a big champion of government reform and making government more efficient.
The first bill I passed in Congress was the Faster Care for Veterans Act just to make it easier for vets to get appointments at the VA. You know, I heard a story of a guy called me out for my platoon and it was like, hey, I tried to get a mental health appointment at the VA because I was thinking about killing myself last week.
And they told me I could see someone in three months. And this great Marine vet that I served with risked his life for all of us.
He's like, look, I wasn't thinking about killing myself in three months. I was thinking about it last week, you know? And so there's a lot of reform that's needed in government.
And I think Democrats have to be more proactive about saying, here's our plan to reform government. Here's how we can do it well.
The point is, Musk might have a good idea that government could be more efficient, but the way he's going about it is just slashing everything. I mean, he's not making government more efficient.
He's making it non-existent, and that does not serve America well. The final question, I'm sure you hear it a lot at your town halls.
I always get asked it as well as, you know, what are the Democrats doing? What should they be doing? Everybody gets, you don't control the House, you don't control the Senate, you don't control the executive branch, but I'm sure you hear it from your constituents. They say, we still want you to fight.
We want you to fight. And so, you know, what does that mean to you where Democrats don't have control? What does that look like? And what are you challenging other Democrats to do as well during these difficult times? We do have to fight.
And I think you got to pick your battles because you're right. We don't have control, so we can't win every battle.
But take issues that you can have an impact on. Like I'm a Marine vet.
So is J.D. Vance.
So I went after him pretty hard when he sold out Zelensky. And I know it got under their skin because they obviously called Fox and Friends and did a hit job on me the following morning, which I'm fine with.
But the point is it got under their skin. We do have to stand up and fight.
But the other thing that we have to do is we've got to put ourselves in a position to win. And let's be honest, we got wiped out in this last election when it should have been easy.
We're running against a convicted felon. Democrats should have cleaned up across the board.
So I don't care how much we lost by. The simple fact that we lost means that we're out of touch with the majority of Americans and we got to work on getting back in touch.
And there's three things I'm focused on doing a lot more listening and a lot less preaching. I wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post about how we just become a party that talks down to people and says, if you disagree with us, you're not only wrong, you're a bad person.
We got to change that around and start listening to a majority of Americans again. The second thing we've got to do is stop listening to the lobbyists, to the extremist groups that give us these litmus tests, these litmus tests on the far left that say, if you don't answer these questions, check these boxes, then you're not a Democrat.
Well, that's not a way to build a broad coalition. That's not the way to build a winning majority.
And then the third thing is let's actually put people in leadership positions who aren't just from safe seats. Put people like Pat Ryan, Abigail Spanberger, I mean, people who win tough elections into leadership positions in the party to show that Democrats actually care about getting elected.
And we're not just catering, you know, to San Francisco or Brooklyn. We got to do these things to show America that we got the message that we lost.
We got the message that you don't trust us anymore, that you think we're out of touch. And we're going to turn this around.
We're not just going to hate Trump. We're going to show a positive vision forward for the country that you can get behind because we're listening to what you want.
I appreciate that. You know, I often get asked, you know, you cover Trump this.
Is it just that you hate Trump? I go, look, if this was a guy who was in Mar-a-Lago just being a billionaire or whatever, I go, I wouldn't. I go, he's impacting you.
He's impacting America. He's he's hurting the economy.
He's hurting our alliance. That's that's why that's why I cover it.
Let's focus on those issues. Congress member Seth Moulton, I appreciate you joining us.
This is your first time on the Midas Touch podcast. We hope you come back.

Thanks for having me.

Everybody hit subscribe.

Let's get to 5 million subscribers.

Can't get enough Midas?

Check out the Midas Plus sub stack for ad-free articles, reports, podcasts, daily recaps from Ron Filipkowski, and more.