Govs.-Elect Sherrill & Spanberger: From the Hill to the State House

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Speaker 4 Hey, everybody. Welcome to the weekly show podcast with Jon Stewart.
My name is actually Jon Stewart, so it is appropriate that I'm the one who is addressing you right now. It is Wednesday.

Speaker 4 It is November 19th.

Speaker 4 The world's still celebrating the shock vote from the House and the Senate, which shows that when they want to get something done, they can do it immediately because all of their prevaricating and all of the stalling and all those things was was absolute bullshit.

Speaker 4 They could have done this thing from the start and gotten it out there instead of all the rigmarole about getting the Epstein files released.

Speaker 4 And it is onto the desk of President Donald Trump, who I'm sure will sign it and we will have access to all of the information, non-redacted, unclassified, except obviously protecting victims' names.

Speaker 4 And we will finally get to the bottom of all this. I, of course, am lying

Speaker 4 and being sarcastic. But,

Speaker 4 you know, we will see what we see. But on the other side, on the other front, there have been developments electorally this past November that I think

Speaker 4 many people were excited about. And we're very fortunate today to have two of the leaders of that electoral charge and two governor-elects.

Speaker 4 that are going to be joining us to discuss not just their road to becoming governors, but the fact that they're both, oddly enough, really connected in a variety of kind of different and interesting and cool ways.

Speaker 4 So we're just going to get right to them.

Speaker 4 And so we have, as our guest today, very exciting,

Speaker 4 tremendous

Speaker 4 election victories this November by margins that, in the words of Donald Trump, have never been seen before in this country.

Speaker 4 Ladies and gentlemen, governor-elect Mikey Sherrill, Democrat New Jersey, governor-elect Abigail Spanberger, Democrat Virginia, governor's elect.

Speaker 5 How are you?

Speaker 4 Congratulations. Now, we spoke earlier.

Speaker 4 Governor-elect is the proper title, but when you become governor, and this is particularly for Virginia,

Speaker 4 you will be referred to as your excellency.

Speaker 5 Her excellency, for the first time in Virginia history, actually.

Speaker 4 You are. And Mikey, you're only the second woman to ever be elected in New Jersey.

Speaker 5 Right. Yeah.
And I think that Her Excellency might be solely in Virginia.

Speaker 5 I am quite sure that will not be the title here in New Jersey.

Speaker 5 But yeah, it's really exciting.

Speaker 5 And the first woman veteran ever elected as governor in the United States. So really exciting.
Yeah. You know, you both come.

Speaker 4 Here's the thing people don't realize. You know, you're sort of bonded by this

Speaker 4 barrier-breaking achievement. You become governors in states, as you said,

Speaker 4 Mikey, only the second. Christy Whitman, you're the first Democrat.
Abigail, Virginia's never had that.

Speaker 4 But people might not realize your stories line up

Speaker 4 really, really

Speaker 4 in an interesting fashion. You're both in sort of the national security state.
Mikey, you're a veteran. Abigail, you were CIA.

Speaker 4 yep uh you come to congress in in 2018 and not to get to together you room together uh in congress and and this is where it gets a little bit uh weird mikey you were born in virginia and now you're the governor of new jersey abigail you lived in new jersey And now you're the, this is like one of those, Lincoln had a secretary named Kennedy.

Speaker 4 And Kennedy had a secretary named Lincoln.

Speaker 4 How did you find each other for the first time? When was that?

Speaker 5 Well, the stars aligned, obviously,

Speaker 5 with all the connections. But

Speaker 5 we were both running in that 2018 cycle, and there were groups of people that were supporting veterans that were especially, you know, supporting women veterans. That was that class,

Speaker 5 as you know, with Alyssa Slotkin and Chrissy Hulihan, Elaine Lauria. So we had gotten to know each other even before we got into Congress.
And because we come from that background of service,

Speaker 5 we were sort of team players. You know, we worked with a group.
And while there were a lot of people in Congress that sort of felt like they were an army of one, I remember one of my

Speaker 5 members of the New Jersey delegation, I said, are we going to come together and make, you know, do this? And they said, oh, I got to be honest with you. It's every man for himself.

Speaker 4 By the way, way, feel free to name all names, including nicknames, at any point that

Speaker 4 you want to do that. But is that, had you known each other before you both made the decisions, Abigail, to

Speaker 4 run for Congress or this through the process of, because people forget the 2018 election was the, oh my God, what have we done? election. Trump had won in 2016.

Speaker 4 And the American public at that time thought,

Speaker 5 oh,

Speaker 4 I didn't think it was going to go this way. And so the congressional election in 2018 was a real barn burner for Democrats.

Speaker 6 That's right.

Speaker 6 And we had met each other along the campaign trail, like Mikey said, because we would do events together as predominantly as folks with national security backgrounds, but also as women with national security backgrounds.

Speaker 6 And we had one other connection, which is that Mikey's sister,

Speaker 6 one of her two sisters, I also have two sisters,

Speaker 6 was my constituent

Speaker 6 in my first election. She later moved out of state, but for a time I claimed her.
So I would get updates on Mikey's race as well, even from her sister, who I would see frequently.

Speaker 4 Very clearly, let's point out Mikey's sister did not move out of your district because of it. Correct.
Not because you want.

Speaker 4 I'm sure it was a different situation. It was a life situation.
It had nothing to do with the representation.

Speaker 5 No,

Speaker 6 she hosted, she hosted Canvas kickoffs for me. She was a super volunteer.

Speaker 5 Oh my gosh. I called her.
I'm like running this hard, I thought very difficult campaign in a Trump district as Abigail was. And I called my sister up one morning.
I had like five minutes.

Speaker 5 And I was like, hey, she's like, I can't talk. I can't talk.
You know, I'm about to launch a canvas for Abigail Spanberger.

Speaker 5 Like, well, yeah,

Speaker 5 I'm running. She knew her already.
I'm running too. Thanks a lot.

Speaker 4 How do you choose when you're in Washington and you're in these freshman classes? How do they do the roommate selection?

Speaker 4 Because it is, you know, generally, especially freshman members, will try and team up two, four, whatever,

Speaker 4 to an apartment. Is that something that, is there an orientation that takes place where they bring in the freshman congresspeople and say,

Speaker 4 you're going to need an apartment or a Pieditaire or something along those lines?

Speaker 4 How did you guys end up going, okay,

Speaker 4 are you with anybody on this project? Let's partner up.

Speaker 5 Well,

Speaker 5 I'll start, Mikey. We were,

Speaker 6 so Lois Frankl from Florida. I'll name names because she'll be pleased.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I was going to say. Lois.

Speaker 6 Lois Frankl from Florida always reaches out to, she's very supportive of women candidates. And so she creates this network.
And then when you get elected, Lois says, I can help find you an apartment.

Speaker 6 She like has a, you know, her side activity.

Speaker 4 Side state agent to the stars. That's nice.

Speaker 6 Her side activity is helping people find apartments. And so we both went through the Lois connection.
Initially, I was very determined to sort of, you know, find my own way and not leverage Lois.

Speaker 6 And then I failed in finding an apartment. So I went to Lois.
And

Speaker 6 we ended up, Mikey and I were both actually on the same floor within the same apartment building. So we were initially sort of like fake roommates.

Speaker 6 And we would end up walking to the office together and back. And

Speaker 6 we were fake roommates for a bit. And then from there, we decided to,

Speaker 6 be real roommates and get lunch.

Speaker 4 Was it, Mikey,

Speaker 4 was it a nerve-wracking conversation? Like, I really want to ask Abigail, but I'm nervous. She's not going to want a room together.
Was it anything? Did you just.

Speaker 5 No, but it was funny because

Speaker 5 I think our families feel like it was like this.

Speaker 5 They all seem to think that going to Washington was this sort of sorority type situation where we were just taking a break from life and going down there. And, you know, we would just,

Speaker 5 we would just go down there and get beaten to hell. And you'd be working these days and you'd come home and, you know, and more than once we're sitting there eating.

Speaker 5 And the one way it was like college is we'd come home and be eating like pickles and peanut butter and nuts. I mean, there'd be no food in the house because you can't leave it there.

Speaker 5 It goes, it spoils when you're back home. And all that, you know, this kind of really

Speaker 5 really like tough days in the office, if you will. Things were not always going real smoothly in Congress.
And

Speaker 5 then you'd get home and you'd be like, oh, God, I'm exhausted. And, you know, I know my husband, Jason, would be like, yeah, whatever.
I'm like, oh, you're exhausted from hanging out.

Speaker 5 And, you know, no kids, nothing, you know, so it was always a little bit.

Speaker 6 My husband Adam said, make sure you mention the potato, which is kind of shorthand for the way that, I mean, we would go to the office, you know, we were working all the time.

Speaker 6 And so we never had any good food. And so occasionally when my husband Adam would come, he's like, Why is there a single potato in the refrigerator?

Speaker 6 And it was like there for months and months and months.

Speaker 6 And we would have these terrible conversations about like how, like, how many years expired does string cheese need to be before you shouldn't eat it?

Speaker 5 Dear God.

Speaker 5 I know.

Speaker 6 It's actually embarrassing.

Speaker 5 We probably shouldn't admit to this.

Speaker 5 All right, TMI, Abigail. Come on.
This is Circle of Trust stuff. No more.
No more. No, no, no.

Speaker 4 You just moved into

Speaker 5 Animal House.

Speaker 5 Yeah, we had to run for governor to to like, you know, lift ourselves up

Speaker 5 to be Her Excellency. No more eating raw potatoes, I guess.

Speaker 4 But it is interesting to hear it's, it's the type of thing that you don't hear that much about in terms of, you know, freshmen, congresspeople, and there's all the pomp and circumstance and the news organizations.

Speaker 4 But underneath it all, there really is a disorienting process of getting involved in government. And

Speaker 4 it's interesting to me in that, you know, look, you guys both come from Mikey, a military background, Abigail, security state background. And now you're thrust into this really dysfunctional world.

Speaker 4 You're used to mission. You're used to order.
You're used to chain of command.

Speaker 5 Showing up on time.

Speaker 4 Showing up on time.

Speaker 4 What was it like learning the sorts of this is how we do it down here and thinking to yourselves, well, that's not how they should do it anywhere. That seems ass backwards.

Speaker 4 What was that experience like?

Speaker 5 I think that's probably

Speaker 5 what the most disoriented thing was.

Speaker 5 To get down there, to have come in on this blue wave, to have built these campaigns, much like we just did from the ground up, speaking to

Speaker 5 as many people as we could, because we were flipping Trump districts. So it wasn't just about.

Speaker 4 Both of you in districts that really had not had a Democrat in maybe decades.

Speaker 5 Right. Right.
And so you were building something. You were talking to people and and convincing them and connecting with them that you had a better path forward.
And

Speaker 5 then we arrived in Congress and it really was, I thought, with this sense of, okay, we've cracked the code. We should now be in the majority in the House of Representatives forever.

Speaker 5 Like this, this should really be lasting. And here's, you know, here's what we saw and here's how we did it.
And it was

Speaker 5 striking to encounter an organization that had a lot of inertia that where people weren't that interested in changing, that they wanted to keep doing what they were doing. And I would say that's

Speaker 5 part of the reason why in the House we were out of power in only two terms, because we, I think, focused on many of the right things, but we didn't deliver on things that I think would have been easy wins.

Speaker 5 And that was the fight Abigail and I engaged in constantly, like, let's not send a messaging bill. Let's effectively pass a piece of legislation.

Speaker 5 And the disconnect between, you know, oh, the people want to see us sending a message and, you know, Abigail and I having been on the ground saying, no, if we don't deliver, if we don't actually deliver for people, nobody in my district wants a message.

Speaker 5 They want flood prevention, that kind of thing.

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Speaker 4 And it's such an interesting place because it so functions on seniority and the difficulties of, and here you guys are, you're coming in as younger people.

Speaker 4 It's your first experience in the house and you've got all the energy that the voters have instilled in your campaigns and in this movement.

Speaker 4 And it must have been to have worked that hard and you feel like you get to this place where you're going to be able to fulfill that and see that the very structure of it is built to restrain that.

Speaker 4 Abigail, that that had to have been, you know,

Speaker 6 it is.

Speaker 6 It flies in the face of all of my natural tendencies.

Speaker 6 But, and this is what I will say, speaking very truthfully about the realities of Congress, but also in case there's anyone who's thinking about running for Congress listening,

Speaker 6 even though that is how it functions, you don't have to function within that frame. And so I, you know, I remember when we first got there, and I represent a district that's very, very,

Speaker 6 I represented a district that was very heavily public servants, retired police officers, retired federal employees.

Speaker 6 And there was this little provision in social security law that basically stole people's, as I use my aggressive language, stole people's social security benefits.

Speaker 6 So if you had pursued a career, firefighters, police officers, teachers,

Speaker 6 you know, some postal employees, federal workers, if you had pursued a career in public service, but also throughout your working years, worked a job where you also,

Speaker 6 it was private sector, when you retired, because you might have had some, in many cases, very nominal public sector pension, you saw your social security benefits reduced in some cases, I mean, thousands upon thousands of dollars.

Speaker 6 And so people were headed off into their retirement, get their first social security check, and it's fractions of what they thought they would get and this this law went into place back in the 80s i get to congress saying oh my goodness okay we're gonna we're gonna fix this everyone agrees for a time it was the most sponsored bill um and i co-led it with a republican from louisiana um but it's a bipartisan co-sponsored bill fantastic and everybody said oh but but if we're going to do this we like if we're going to repeal this these terrible two provisions and where it was really horrible is if someone lost their spouse they themselves had worked throughout their career they lost a spouse who had been a you know a firefighter police officer they saw their own as the surviving spouse their social security benefits i mean people were thrust into poverty people lost their homes it's an outrage but frankly part of the problem is so many you know there are more than 3.2 million people who saw change the day we ultimately i'll get to the finish of it pass this bill but you know people would say oh yeah i support it i would support it and they'd co-sponsor it we'd have all these co-sponsors But then year after year, we couldn't actually get leadership, Democratic or Republican leadership to bring it for a vote.

Speaker 6 And we know we have the votes.

Speaker 5 People have to.

Speaker 4 You don't realize like people can co-sponsor. They can do whatever they want.

Speaker 4 But if it doesn't go through leadership, because leadership controls, and in the House, especially, which is a zero-sum game, whoever controls it has full control of committees, of what gets to be voted on, of any of those different situations.

Speaker 4 So you can have all that and they just hold on to it.

Speaker 6 And on the Democratic side of the aisle, the pushback we would get would be like, well, we need to do, you know, a general reform.

Speaker 6 Let's save this for a larger reform because, you know, frankly, like giving benefits back to people who earned it seemed like the sweetener.

Speaker 6 And then on the Republican side of the aisle, it was, oh, this will cost so much. Well, it will cost so much because we're actually giving people their earned value.

Speaker 5 Right.

Speaker 5 And the CBO.

Speaker 4 Oh, it costs so much because we're fixing a problem that occurred than the money they've already given to the government.

Speaker 6 And I think one of the most horrifying things is this, when the CBO scored it, they actually said that we would see cost reductions in some of the safety net programs because suddenly seniors who had worked their lives in service to their community or their country would no longer be eligible for food stamps or, you know, SNAP programs and safety net programs.

Speaker 6 Long story short,

Speaker 6 we ended up doing a discharge petition because we couldn't get leadership to bring it. We forced the hands of leadership in the house.

Speaker 4 People familiar with discharge petitions now because

Speaker 4 everybody knows the title now.

Speaker 6 Before I used to have to reference Legally Blonde 2, where that's where a discharge petition

Speaker 5 notoriety.

Speaker 4 It's the schoolhouse rock of the new generation.

Speaker 6 So we got it through. We got it signed into law.

Speaker 6 It was the last bill signing that President Biden did before he left. And it's, I mean, changed lives everywhere across Virginia.

Speaker 6 You know, and I got letters from across the country.

Speaker 4 But think about that.

Speaker 4 You're talking about six years. You go in there and you do that.
And we just said, okay, it was the last bill President Biden signed.

Speaker 4 Well, that's six years after you guys had come into Congress and wanted that.

Speaker 4 And Mikey, that's, and this is great because I think it encapsulates all of the frustration at times that is the congressional body.

Speaker 4 So much of it is Republicans, like in high school, going door to door and going, would you sponsor me? I'm doing a dance-a-thon.

Speaker 4 And I'd like, and you have to gain, you have a very particular thing that you want to do, right? That's going to fix a problem.

Speaker 4 And, and then you get all the signatures and you get the bill that you want it to be. And then leadership will tell you, well, actually, we're playing this different game

Speaker 4 where we're trying to,

Speaker 4 you know, use leverage for those things to get this other thing. Yep.

Speaker 4 Is that something that happened to you, Mikey, as well?

Speaker 5 It did. And I think, you know, in some cases, you get it, right?

Speaker 5 It's really trying to get the voting block you need to get stuff forward and what the deal is.

Speaker 5 I think the problem for people like myself and Abigail, she just charted out, was this sense that we run tough races.

Speaker 5 And when you run tough races,

Speaker 5 you win in places that don't have Democratic votes by connecting with people, by saying, look,

Speaker 5 you know, I'm a Democrat, I'm a proud Democrat, and I'm that, you know, I'm a proud Democrat because I deliver for working people, and here's what I'm gonna do.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 I will tell you, after years of serving in my district, you know, we just, I would win with about a quarter of registered Republicans and stuff like that because of delivering effective government to people.

Speaker 5 And you do see sometimes in Washington, there becomes this,

Speaker 5 there is sort of this disconnect.

Speaker 5 And there is, I remember, you know, something that I think would blow our minds off, and we've talked about it, is we were told there was this procedural motion that they always wanted you to just vote with the party on.

Speaker 5 And yet, the votes, they would be gotcha votes from Republicans. And they'd say, well, just tell your constituents that it's a procedural vote.

Speaker 5 I'm like, okay, I'm going to go tell my constituents after I vote against something they really, really want. Don't worry about it, guys.
It's just a procedural vote. Like, disconnect.

Speaker 5 And I think you know, because you've been there. I mean, you fought, John, for 9-11 funding for the victim compensation fund.
You fought for the PACT Act. So you see

Speaker 5 how hard it can be.

Speaker 5 But to Abigail's point, you see how good leadership, how people focused, people who are elected, who are focused on the people they serve can get stuff accomplished in a powerful way. It just,

Speaker 5 it feels like in too many cases, that becomes very difficult with the leadership in place, with a sort of leadership that's disconnected from the people.

Speaker 5 And certainly with Mike Johnson, I mean, that is a man who is not serving the people. He is serving Donald Trump.
Sure. So with that kind of leadership, you get nothing done.

Speaker 4 I also think it's what I viewed from being down there is that Washington works on a different currency system than the rest of the country does. It's almost as though you've gone into the Eurozone

Speaker 4 when you go into DC,

Speaker 4 because as you just said, so there's sort of this idea of direct, and I'll give you an example.

Speaker 4 So when we talked about like PACT Act or Zadroga, Zadroga was the 9-11 first responders bill and Democratic leadership. And I don't think you guys were there yet.
This was earlier.

Speaker 4 This is probably 2015, 2015.

Speaker 5 That was early. We were just getting money for the victim compensation fund in our that's right.

Speaker 4 Okay, so that was that was the 2019 vote, I think. Yep.

Speaker 4 So we would go down there and we'd say, these people are dying of cancer. And the congresspeople would say, and absolutely right, but we can't go and put it on the floor through regular order.

Speaker 4 We're going to try and sneak it into the omnibus bill, like transportation, which passes every year, or the NDAA, which is the

Speaker 4 defense authority, National Defense.

Speaker 6 National Defense Authorization.

Speaker 5 That's where I do my best work. Yes.

Speaker 4 We're just going to jam it in there. And then in the Senate, Mitch McConnell would say, actually,

Speaker 4 I want an export tax on petroleum. So I'm going to remove your.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 it was all a jigsaw puzzle that they were working on, but none of it, to your point,

Speaker 4 I guess when you were down there, did you see a system that was so out of touch? And my frustration with it was it didn't have to be,

Speaker 4 that the rules that they would tell you are,

Speaker 4 you know sacrosanct they broke all the time yeah and i saw abigail's eyes just literally like rolled back into her head like but what what you begin to realize is oh this is all bullshit they're pretending that these things are sacrosanct when they manipulate them all the time And they could actually do it to the good.

Speaker 6 And I think one of the challenges is that, you know, then when you, particularly in the House, because there's just so many members, when you're kind of withholding information and when votes come up so quickly, it becomes at times a disorienting process for newer members

Speaker 6 or for members who are endeavoring to really be effective and do things. You know,

Speaker 6 in the early days of COVID, I was sitting on the floor with Chip Roy, who,

Speaker 6 for anyone who's unaware, Chip Roy is a

Speaker 6 right winger of the

Speaker 5 right winger's right winger.

Speaker 4 Even beyond most right wingers are like, won't sit on the floor with Chip Roy. Like, it's too hard.

Speaker 5 No,

Speaker 6 it was sometimes just me, actually, at times. And now the similarities, you try to find similarities.
This is how you govern. Chip Roy and I are both UVA grads.

Speaker 6 We both happen to have the same birthday.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 yeah, and in 2019, UVA was the national champions in basketball. So, you know, the year, a year later, basketball season's, you know, not really happening because of COVID.

Speaker 6 We're sitting on the floor and we're talking. And this was when there was story after story of, you know, all these stock trades in the early days of COVID.

Speaker 6 And so he and I are sitting there and we're saying, this is kind of outrageous. And whether you think that people are intentionally trying to get rich off of information or not kind of doesn't matter.

Speaker 6 The fact that everybody thinks and it's being reported as though it's fact that you're in this meeting and then you buy this stock, therefore it's corruption. Like, let's put an end to it.

Speaker 6 So, we did something that, you know, not, and Mikey can speak to this as well. Like, not all the time do people just write their own bills.

Speaker 6 I always wrote my own bills, but a lot of people think you got to go to committee to like, mother, may I get my bill. We said, this is wrong.
Let's write a bill to fix it.

Speaker 6 We consulted with all these sort of good governance groups that were a little bit kind of surprised by the combination of me with Chip Roy. You know, and

Speaker 6 in fact, we really went from a place where people would be deeply offended, you know, and I would have many members tell me, you're implying that members of Congress are

Speaker 6 corrupt, to which I would say, it actually doesn't matter like whether it's true or not. If the public perceives it, it's on us to change that perception.

Speaker 6 And it's amazing because in a short period of time, what went from a bill that was broadly seen as this,

Speaker 6 you know, this, the Democrat and Republican sort of pushing up against tradition in their parties has a really broad coalition.

Speaker 6 When I left Congress to run for governor, Seth Magazineer was the Democrat who's now continued to work with Chip on this bill. And it's really got some legs to it.

Speaker 6 And, you know, we'll see because so far a lot of people are saying, yes, they want it to be brought for a vote.

Speaker 6 But

Speaker 6 it's interesting to just see the way that, to Mikey's point, when you're being responsive to the things that you're hearing on the ground and what the American people or your constituents want,

Speaker 6 you know, like, and so everyone's surprised. Oh, wow, this is really popular.

Speaker 6 Yeah, of course it's popular because people deserve to trust their government and we should take proactive actions to help them do that.

Speaker 4 Listen, a great example. Mikey, you can speak to that.
You know, they talk about releasing the Epstein files. And this thing is locked in Congress and nobody is going to vote.

Speaker 4 None of the Republicans are going to vote for it. We're not going to bring it to the floor.

Speaker 4 There's this huge discharge petition and they get the 217 and then there's a representative in a special election from Arizona.

Speaker 4 She she's the 218th and that's all they need and then they can force the vote. Great.
I'm not going to swear her in. We're just going to keep this thing.
Mike Johnson holds it back. Everything goes.

Speaker 4 This is the most controversial. How dare they? The Senate, it'll die in the Senate.
There's nothing that can be done. And

Speaker 4 the moment it appears, oh shit, it's going to happen. Suddenly, it's a vote.
It's 434 to 1. It goes to the Senate that night.
It is voted on by unanimous consent and immediately goes.

Speaker 4 And that's when you, this is why I think people are cynical

Speaker 4 about Congress. What it shows is, oh, all of that

Speaker 4 reticence was nonsense.

Speaker 4 You had the ability to do this whenever you wanted to. You had the votes to do it.
It took 30 seconds.

Speaker 4 And now you're all claiming, you saw the floor of the House. They're They're all cheering.

Speaker 5 Hey,

Speaker 4 it's what we thought.

Speaker 4 It was exactly that way with PACT Act, exactly that way with Zadroga. Mike, is that the part where you go, are we just putting on a play down here?

Speaker 5 I think it's the part where you decide to run for governor.

Speaker 5 Quite frankly.

Speaker 5 You know, when you start to say, look, because you're right, you could use your power for good. If you were just relentlessly focused on serving the public, it would not only be,

Speaker 5 you know, using your powers for good, it would be very powerful. Right.
And yet people are thirsty. They are so caught up in these like arcane, weird things.

Speaker 5 And we can't do it this way and we have to do it that way. And the only thing we can do to leverage power is to do it with only Democrats or only Republicans and we can't do this.

Speaker 5 And so I'll tell you, you know, I got on the ground here and I'm running hard. And I can't tell you how many times as I was running, people said, Mikey, everybody says that.

Speaker 5 Oh, I'm going going to do this. Oh, everybody says that.
And so then I'm like, okay, look,

Speaker 5 I'm going to hold me accountable. On day one, I'm going to declare a freeze on utility rate hikes.
So here we are, like, you know, brass tax. I'll be very clear.

Speaker 5 So you don't think I'm making something up or speaking in generalities or, you know, coming up with a 10-year plan. I'm going to do it.

Speaker 5 And immediately, even members of my own party are like, oh, I don't think you can do that. I'm like, I know exactly.
People kept saying, how are you going to do that?

Speaker 5 I go, go, here's how I'm going to do it. And they're like, can you do it? I go, I know exactly how I'm going to do it.
And

Speaker 5 yet, even in my own party, it's like, oh,

Speaker 5 I don't know. I don't think so.

Speaker 5 You know, let's write a strongly worded letter.

Speaker 4 Oh, yeah. The Chuck Schumer method works very, very well.

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Speaker 4 Is the fear from the party that, like, I know those votes where you say, like, oh, they're procedural votes, but they're there to just create the ads. And by the way,

Speaker 4 the ads. Thank God the election is over.
Mikey, I live in New Jersey.

Speaker 5 Uh-huh.

Speaker 4 I wanted to jump out a window.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 4 It's just angry.

Speaker 5 They were about me.

Speaker 4 That's a good point.

Speaker 4 By the way, what does that

Speaker 4 feel like? Because it even goes, look, like the stock trade thing, Abigail was talking about, like, my guess is you were supporting that, but

Speaker 4 they caught you in that. And it was really hard.
I'm assuming that.

Speaker 5 But, you know, I mean, again, look,

Speaker 5 you know, there's no crying on the odd here. Like, shame on me for getting caught on some ad that had come out right before I go on a program and not being prepared to talk about it better.

Speaker 5 Right, right. But that is tough.
And so, you know, to Abigail's point, I think it's really important. It's not just impropriety.
It's the appearance of impropriety, right? So

Speaker 5 my husband and I have divested of all individual stocks. We don't trade individual stocks.
We don't,

Speaker 5 you know, we've gone above and beyond ethics. We've put out, and this is really cringy when you're doing it as a candidate.
We've put out all of our finances. I mean, you can track to the dollar.

Speaker 5 And there is no more transparent candidate probably in the history of New Jersey than, you know, what we've put out on all of our information.

Speaker 5 And so you do all that to really be responsive. But again, sometimes I was just, I feel like the New York Post owes me some money because I sold so many papers for them.

Speaker 5 I mean, they were every single day. I think my favorite, somebody framed it and gave it to me on election night.
There was a title that said,

Speaker 5 Mikey Cheryl's pulling five points ahead. Why that's really, really bad for her?

Speaker 5 I mean, it was every day. I was like,

Speaker 4 are there ads that

Speaker 4 do get under your skin, like Abigail or Mike? you know, was there an ad that ran that you thought that is so either asinine or outrageous or close to the bone?

Speaker 4 Like, were there ads that you feared or ads that you just got angry at? Abigail?

Speaker 6 I think it...

Speaker 6 I've certainly reacted differently. Like when you're running your first race and, you know, Mikey and I had no political background.
We weren't necessarily,

Speaker 6 we didn't know what to expect. And so when the first television ad comes out and

Speaker 6 it's just like, you're the worst person in the world, it certainly impacted me a lot more back then.

Speaker 6 And it impacts, I will say, my mother

Speaker 5 substantially. Really?

Speaker 6 And to this day, by this election, the ads didn't really bother me. I would usually watch them first.

Speaker 6 This is my coping mechanism. I'd watch an ad first with no sound on to sort of

Speaker 5 get the visuals of how spooky I look.

Speaker 6 There was, there was one ad they did, I guess, in my last congressional race where they sort of superimposed my head on Nancy Pelosi's body. And they, I think they called me like Nancy Pelosi Jr.

Speaker 6 or something.

Speaker 6 And I, I looked at that one.

Speaker 5 I was like, wow, I look really good in that color blue. Who knew?

Speaker 6 But they really impact my mother, most especially because, I mean, and so she, she needs to talk through all the reasons why it's not correct.

Speaker 6 And, and then with my, with my kids, in my first election, there was an ad where they basically kind of tried to call me a terrorist.

Speaker 6 And, you know, my, my oldest daughter, I guess she was fourth grade at the time.

Speaker 6 And she said that, you know, kids on the playground for her and for my first grader would just ask, like, is your mom a terrorist? And they would say, no. And then the kids would sort of run away.

Speaker 6 But I think.

Speaker 4 Well, now we know who the ads are effective for. Oh, my goodness.
Fourth graders are really the level. Mikey, did you have that as well?

Speaker 4 Just ads that, you know, ripple, the effects ripple through the family or, or ones that you thought that one's going to be a problem for me.

Speaker 5 You know,

Speaker 5 it's, you never liked to see yourself looking like an idiot. I mean, that's just kind of, I think, universal.
So you don't love different missteps or you're like, oh, damn it. But

Speaker 5 to Abigail's point, the people you're most worried about, oddly, are not your constituents, but but your family members, your kids, your husband.

Speaker 5 You know, you just don't want them to face any retribution or blowback because of what you do.

Speaker 5 But, you know, I think our kids are probably pretty resilient at this point. My son was down the shore and he was really thrilled to report because my opponent was having

Speaker 5 these airplane banner ads. Oh, God.
He's hitting them up on the shore. God.

Speaker 5 One of them said, I mean, you know, I can't throw stones from this glasshouse. We had our own airplane ads, but nevertheless,

Speaker 5 it said, Mikey Cheryl equals Phil Murphy 2.0, which I didn't think was super effective, but my son was thrilled. He was like, oh my God, mom, I saw your name.

Speaker 5 He's like, I tried to get a picture. It was on an airplane.
It was awesome. So, you know, he was quite pleased.

Speaker 4 He didn't realize that was a negative. He didn't realize that was in quotes, a negative ad.
He thought it was kind of exciting.

Speaker 5 Yeah, yeah. He was really excited.
but i think the key thing um

Speaker 5 for the ads and stuff was to titrate here in new jersey um

Speaker 5 there you know i i think it's it's understood here that you need to be swinging in an election i've had people who work around the country that you know will say i think we're going to have to go negative and i'm like yep i i call it you know i call it just pointing out the truth but let's go um right that the people and when i'm not doing that there are some races i run where, you know, we don't have to do that.

Speaker 5 We can just present our case.

Speaker 5 And people tell me, you know, hey, you're not running hard enough. People here don't think you're running hard enough.
So the ads do. They're like, they come at something.

Speaker 5 The thing that bugs me is when they're, they're just so not true. So, for example, I was in one interview

Speaker 5 saying in the Dino Badala show, I was saying,

Speaker 5 you know, Democrats can't say this and sort of charting out how,

Speaker 5 oh, you know, electricity costs, et cetera.

Speaker 4 And they if you're a good person, I remember this ad.

Speaker 5 I'm not saying it again, notice, because I don't know. No, no, no.
I'll say it.

Speaker 4 What the ad was, was Mikey was saying in the guise of what Democrats can't say is it's more expensive for this renewable energy, but if you're a good person, you'll do it.

Speaker 4 And they took that as you were saying to people, if you're a good person, you'll pay more.

Speaker 5 And I was doing the opposite. Yes.
I was saying, you know, we shouldn't be saying this. Now we can drive down costs in this way.

Speaker 5 So that clip, which was just

Speaker 5 like

Speaker 5 not true, that was bugging me, you know, and

Speaker 5 it's important.

Speaker 5 Yeah. Yeah.
So, but you can't, you know, it's just, you know, you know, if you're explaining, you're losing.

Speaker 5 So I couldn't just go up on, so I wasn't going to put a million dollars of me direct to camera saying that wasn't actually what I was saying. Shut up.
Yeah. You're a jerk.

Speaker 5 You know, that's not fair.

Speaker 4 Do you guys, is there a sense? Because the ads, again, it's sort of the conventional thinking is the ubiquity of the ads or how that goes. That's going to dictate who wins.

Speaker 4 Abigail, they ran, you know, the they, them.

Speaker 4 She's for they, them for you. It didn't work on

Speaker 4 your campaign in the way that people say it worked on Kamala's campaign. But what is the thing? Because as a.

Speaker 4 As a spectator in New Jersey, watching the ads and all those things, like his ads, they were good. He did a good job misrepresenting or doing whatever it was that he did.

Speaker 4 And then the election comes and you blew his doors off in a way that, I mean, Murphy only beat Chitterelli, who was Mikey's opponent, by I think two or three points last time.

Speaker 4 Mikey beat him by 13 points. Abigail, you did the same.

Speaker 5 He liked to round up to 14.

Speaker 5 Son of a bitch.

Speaker 4 You know what? I'm going to get a plane and a banner and fly that on the Jersey shore this year. Hey, Jack, how's that 14 points taste?

Speaker 4 Abigail, same.

Speaker 4 So are we missing the point with the people on the ground as to how things are connecting? And what is the importance? Because I know that those ads are the thing that dominate.

Speaker 4 What are the keys in your mind, Abigail, that candidates do that actually make a difference?

Speaker 6 Well, and I think it can change at different levels depending upon the size of the electorate. Certainly running statewide is different in many ways than running in a congressional race.

Speaker 4 You can't touch everybody in the way you can congressionally.

Speaker 5 Exactly.

Speaker 6 Exactly. And what I believe to be the case is people want to have a sense of who you are as a person, as a candidate.

Speaker 6 And some of that comes from television ads and some of that comes from interviews and some of that comes from just engagement, but they also want to feel like invited into a campaign.

Speaker 6 I think, and I'll speak for both of our campaigns. And what I found so interesting is, you know, I would talk to people who are always worried about Mikey's race.

Speaker 6 And I would always say, you don't need to worry about Mikey. Mikey's going to win.
She's going to win her primary. She's going to win the election.
I have no doubts. Like, relax.

Speaker 6 Because I think that what people were missing is Abigail's talking to my mom, I think.

Speaker 4 You guys are just, your whole job is just calming down each other's moms.

Speaker 5 Well, yeah.

Speaker 6 When our sisters don't do it well enough, then we have to step in.

Speaker 5 Right.

Speaker 6 But, you know, it's, it's, it's about having that engagement. And I think what we did both very well, and I'll just kind of speak a little bit more detail about my race, is

Speaker 6 we built out a field organization very, very expansively all across Virginia where I had people on the ground who were working for the campaign, who were getting together, who were creating community.

Speaker 6 In the end, I didn't have a primary, so I had the advantage of more time. So, you know, in the spring, we were doing petition parties where we were getting people together.

Speaker 6 They were coming together around something that they care about, which might, which in this case was the election.

Speaker 6 And then those people continued on through the summer, knocking doors and, you know, and going to farmers markets and

Speaker 6 getting out and delivering signs.

Speaker 6 And, you know, importantly, while a lot of these negative ads were out there, I always thought it was extraordinarily important to have positive bio, what am I for ads because you can't just be about, you know, vote against this person.

Speaker 6 And, you know, we're trying to deliver an economic message on affordability. And I'll take credit for this.

Speaker 6 Whether I don't, I don't know if in the end the people who made my television ads liked it or not.

Speaker 6 But I was like, why don't I just say, like, there's so much more to be done than you can say in a 30-second ad. And can I put the website up?

Speaker 6 You know, and everyone's like, oh, I don't know that anybody will go to the website. I'm like,

Speaker 6 if they don't, they don't, but at least they know, you know, and so then we would say, like, this is what I'm for. I'm for a more affordable Virginia.
Go to affordablevirginia.com to see my plans.

Speaker 6 And, and we did a lot of bio work as well so that people understood who I am as a person, why I'm running.

Speaker 6 And what was interesting is the ways that people would create threads of personal connections, whether it's because they're also parents of school-aged kids or because

Speaker 6 they too had grown up. My father was career law enforcement, my mother was a nurse.
And so I would have people say like, oh, my mom was a nurse too. I know what that means, right?

Speaker 6 And these threads of places where people are recognizing that there is some commonality in this world that at times feels so chaotic and so disconnected and people are at each other's throats to have those threads and also know like, oh, that's the woman who says she wants to work really hard to do right by me and my community and the people I love.

Speaker 6 And so it's kind of all of those pieces that essentially making it so that nobody could go. anywhere without kind of hearing my name or knowing a little bit about what it is that I might be for.

Speaker 4 The reason I bring it up is because we talked about the disconnect between kind of the Washington establishment and the leadership of the party and the needs of the people that they purport to represent.

Speaker 4 And that dissatisfaction and disconnect, I think, is what in many ways gave space for somebody like Donald Trump to demagogue and to get into power.

Speaker 4 But the other thing is the disconnect between the national narrative about what people like yourselves represent for the Democratic Party. So

Speaker 4 everything you heard was, what is the Democratic Party mom Donnie and socialism? Or is it Mikey Sheryl and Abigail Spanberger and the national security security mom? What is it

Speaker 6 who are also really boring, right?

Speaker 5 Who would also be

Speaker 4 not Mom Dani and can't do that? And what you realize is on the ground, it's none of that shit. Yeah, it's the story of an individual connecting on different levels in many different ways.

Speaker 4 And the narratives that were fed at a national level through the media or through party leadership

Speaker 4 are so disconnected. And

Speaker 4 Mikey, did you feel that as well in yours?

Speaker 5 Oh, certainly. I, you know, I finally was in one interview

Speaker 5 with

Speaker 5 someone who's who asked me for like the 12th time in interviews and stuff, you know, what, is it you or is it Mom Donnie or what do people think about Mom Donnie? Or what do you think about him?

Speaker 5 And I just looked at him and I said, you know what?

Speaker 5 You're the only person asking me about Mom Donnie right now. You know, I don't go around to Matutian and people are like, oh my gosh, Mikey.

Speaker 5 The number one thing on my mind today as I woke up was, what do you think about Mom Dani? It was, you know, it was, how are you going to lower my utility costs, right?

Speaker 5 You know, I never heard it.

Speaker 4 Which, by the way, is what he ran on. Right.
You may have different prescriptions, but that's what he ran on.

Speaker 5 And so what we need to do as Democrats is field candidates who are connecting with people. That's A.

Speaker 5 And that's what I think, you know, everyone in the Democratic Party just did right now.

Speaker 5 But then B, and this is also critically important, is then we need to govern. And we are having a conversation, right? In the Democratic Party.

Speaker 5 I mean, the best thing I can do now, you know, I could go around the nation talking about my field program or Latino voters or white working class men and how I overperform there or how I get young people out or my social media program that's new.

Speaker 5 I could chart all this out for everyone.

Speaker 5 But the best thing I could do for anybody, any Democrat in this country, is to govern the state of New Jersey in an incredibly effective way and find a pathway forward when we have a president of the United States that is trying to destroy the economy of our country and finding ways to deliver for people.

Speaker 5 That is the very best thing I can do in this position. And we're having a conversation in the Democratic Party with our campaigns about exactly how to deliver for people.

Speaker 5 And the Republican Party is just 100% doing whatever the hell Trump decides that day. Should we release the Epstein file? Should we not? You know, whatever you say, boss, right?

Speaker 4 We've gotten to now, so we see the dysfunction of the House and how it's removed from the sort of direct governance of getting things done for people and how they overcomplicate what should be much simpler.

Speaker 4 you know, and direct help for their voters. And that frustration leading you guys to step away and get the top executive job.

Speaker 4 What I think some people might not realize is the top executive job is not the same in every state. New Jersey has a very different prescription for even what the budget can be.

Speaker 4 The New Jersey governor is very powerful, has veto power over a lot of different things. Abigail, you're in a different situation.
I think in Virginia,

Speaker 4 the governor,

Speaker 4 you can only serve one, you can't serve consecutive terms. You've only got one.
And even within that term,

Speaker 4 it'll be two years before you can put your budget forth.

Speaker 4 Is that correct?

Speaker 6 That's right. We're the only state in the country that has a one-term governor limit.

Speaker 6 You can serve non-consecutive terms, but nobody's done it for decades.

Speaker 6 And I'll be coming in on our current governor's budget. And we can move forward with our own budget amendments.

Speaker 6 But the reality is that, yes, we're going to be kind of adjusting. I'll be in the middle of my term when I put forth my own budget.

Speaker 6 And then I'll be leaving when I'm handing a budget off to somebody new.

Speaker 6 And just yesterday, I was in a large meeting of briefing for the House of Delegates Appropriations Committee, looking at the kind of historical revenue coming in, spending in the general fund.

Speaker 6 And frankly, and they were very clearly outlining because of so many of the dollars that came in because of COVID that Mikey and I voted for, the state has had a lot of money to move into different places, spending more than we have been bringing in for a number of years.

Speaker 6 And so, you know, even in that committee, when I was speaking with committee members at the end of a number of presentations, I said, you know, I think everybody saw on page 30 of that presentation that this is going to be, you know, next year, this is going to be the year when our spending can't outpace what we're actually bringing in in revenue because those historical federal dollars that emanated out of the pandemic are no longer there.

Speaker 6 So there's going to be, and we're so impacted.

Speaker 4 And also you'll be penalized. Yeah.

Speaker 5 You know, and this is happening in jersey as well i mean mikey trump has removed projects you know he is penalizing almost entirely blue states but have you looked at mikey the levers of governance that that you can use to more effectively and directly do the types of things that you're talking about is that a practice that you guys are already taking part of yeah so i don't this may come as a surprise to people because we we run you know i've traditionally run these knockdown drag out fights here in new new jersey for for votes and campaigns and issues but i actually the only reason i do that is so i can govern so i can actually deliver so i can get to that place and so we've been at it for over a year now meeting with so many different groups across the state whether it's you know how to revitalize atlantic city what it's going to take to build transportation across the state where where those pockets of innovation are that we've got to overinvest in but on layered into all of this is the fact that New Jersey, a state that gives $70 billion more to the federal government than we get back, we are now seeing massive cuts to Title I school funding, to SNAP programs, to Medicare, to the Affordable Care Act subsidies.

Speaker 5 So at every level,

Speaker 5 the federal government is failing to run programs that they are on the hook for traditionally. So what this is, is sort of a both and Trenton needs to function much more effectively, right?

Speaker 5 The red tape and permitting issues are just layered upon layered upon layer.

Speaker 5 And people have kicked the can down the road, whether it's the state health benefits plan or

Speaker 5 some of the, you know, flooding problems that we have on the Whippany River, right? So the can is the, it's time now to address that. And really the thing that I have been most,

Speaker 5 I guess, excited by, because if you live in New Jersey, you have this kind of sense that there's all kinds of entrenched interests in Trenton and you can go up against them, but you're just going to fail miserably.

Speaker 5 Right.

Speaker 4 And corruption. I mean, flat out.
If you live in New Jersey, you understand the level of corruption that's been endemic here since the beginning.

Speaker 5 Right. And so to get down to Trenton and to almost have several people come to me

Speaker 5 with this sense of Like,

Speaker 5 I'm so excited to finally have somebody that's willing to take on the hard fights, You know, to have a meeting with people that, you know, you kind of lay out like, this is going to be rough, guys.

Speaker 5 We've got like some problems we've got to cut through. We've got entrenched interests that we've got to deal with.
We've got, you know, Canada's been kicked down the road.

Speaker 5 We've got pension debt, et cetera. And we've got all these cutbacks at the federal level and we've got to deal with that.
And to have them actually

Speaker 5 be excited that there's somebody that wants to take this on and help navigate this and a leadership that's going to take it on and not say, oh, let's just duck our heads and hope it happens on somebody else's watch.

Speaker 5 Push it to the next level. That was the most exciting thing I saw was that, hey, everybody is ready to tackle hard problems that have not been addressed for decades here.

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Speaker 4 Have you guys, have either of you looked into, you know, Mikey, you mentioned New Jersey gives $70 billion more to the federal government than it gets back.

Speaker 4 Meanwhile, they're cutting, you know, different transportation projects and those things.

Speaker 4 And Abigail, I don't know what Virginia's, you know, net payments to the federal government are versus what they get back.

Speaker 4 I do know that as a state that largely relies on government workers, because so many of them live near Washington, D.C., I'm sure you guys are suffering through these layoffs that have been occurring within the federal government and all kinds of other

Speaker 4 problems associated with it. Is there any thought to how these blue state governors who've been penalized so drastically with

Speaker 4 whether it's ICE enforcement issues or money being taken away from research or schools or any of those things,

Speaker 4 what governors can do to level that field? You know, so many have just tried to stay out of Trump's way to avoid it, but it's unavoidable. He's going to do it.

Speaker 4 So is there anything, Abigail, that you've seen that governors can do?

Speaker 6 Well, and I think there's a variety of different things. In some cases, we've seen some states come together for multi-state compacts, and certainly

Speaker 6 we will be heavily, heavily impacted by the ramifications of HR1, particularly in the healthcare space.

Speaker 6 Economically, Virginia is set to be the second most financially hurt state in the country in the healthcare space.

Speaker 6 Many of our rural hospitals will close. We've already had fundamental.

Speaker 4 She's talking about in terms of like Medicaid rescissions and things like that, where they took money away from, and by the way, created a fund to help alleviate some of that for Trump voters in rural areas,

Speaker 4 but will do nothing for those hospitals in urban areas.

Speaker 6 And importantly,

Speaker 6 yes, the cuts will impact safety net hospitals across the board, urban areas, suburban areas, the like.

Speaker 6 But importantly, in a state like Virginia, where we have, I mean, you know, agriculture is our number one private industry.

Speaker 6 We are a very rural state in many parts of Virginia, but unfortunately, the parameters and the federal definition that they use for what constitutes rural was meant to get the vote of an Alaska senator.

Speaker 6 And in fact, the rural hospitals in Virginia that are absolutely rural in who they serve and how they serve them and in distances that people need to go across, you know, through mountains to get to.

Speaker 6 We actually don't even qualify here in Virginia for those dollars, even though we're set to see some of our hospitals close. We've already had three rural health clinics announce their closure.

Speaker 6 So I say that because we have seen some states are moving towards some multi-state compacts to try and leverage telehealth, you know, a variety of different efforts.

Speaker 6 But importantly, what I think is also missing is because you can't hide from the numbers anymore. It's how many dollars are not flowing into a state.

Speaker 6 And in a state like the Commonwealth of Virginia, where it's millions upon millions upon millions of dollars pulled back from transportation projects, pulled back from research at our many, many public universities and private universities.

Speaker 4 It's Are they trying to force you into austerity plans?

Speaker 4 Is the idea here, is Trump in any way trying to leverage these blue states to get governors into austerity stances so that they deliver less for their people?

Speaker 4 Is the strategy here purely punitive? Or is there an electoral message behind all this? Do either one of you have, Mikey, do you have a thought on that?

Speaker 6 Can I give a quick answer on that one?

Speaker 5 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 6 I honestly think it's a lack of understanding of the basic of economics of how the federal government

Speaker 5 interplays. I don't even see that option.

Speaker 6 I don't actually know that it's as maniacal as that. I think that people are just like, oh, like even the way that Medicaid is broken down between state payments and federal payments,

Speaker 6 the fact that giving someone access to preventative health care is actually a cost savings, right?

Speaker 6 Because then they're not rolling into hospitals in an exigent circumstance where because of Ronald Reagan, they will get life-stabilizing care.

Speaker 6 I think it's actually just a total lack of understanding about how the basics of government works and a willingness of Republican legislators, and I'll call out the ones in Virginia, to vote for a bill that, you know, rural hospital leadership in their districts, known Republicans, you know, the list goes on and on.

Speaker 6 It's not a political issue. We're just writing op-ed after op-ed and waving red flags saying, danger, danger, danger.
This is going to hurt. us.

Speaker 6 And in fact, some of the communities that will be most hurt by that bill in particular are the ones that are represented by Republicans in Congress.

Speaker 5 Though I will note,

Speaker 6 there are also districts that I won on election day.

Speaker 4 Oh, yeah. You got to throw that in there.

Speaker 5 Yeah, that's everyone's on notice. You got to go.

Speaker 5 It's so hard to understand about what's going on here is that I think we have a president who literally doesn't seem to give a crap about the economy of the United States of America and is solely intent on enriching himself.

Speaker 5 And so, you know, you look at like the regulations around technology for the UAE,

Speaker 5 they throw billions into his crypto account and suddenly they're all lifted.

Speaker 5 You're a fossil fuel company, you pay $250 million to his campaign and you get all your regulations lifted. I mean, it is this totally kleptocratic, like corrupt.
administration. And it's really hard.

Speaker 5 And it's, I think, especially hard maybe for people who come from this lifetime of public service. And, you know, I've taken, I started taking oaths to the Constitution when I was 18.

Speaker 5 I deeply believe in this. This to me, you know, maybe I'm a rube here, but I deeply believe in the values of this nation and that

Speaker 5 there are so many public servants who really want to serve this country. And so to have a president who really simply wants money and really will sell out the country.

Speaker 4 Anything gold. Anything.
Anything gold

Speaker 5 is really, I think, twisty to get your head around.

Speaker 5 And I think that's why this election was so important because it was a shot across the bow, as I kept saying, it needed to be to wake up

Speaker 5 some of the Republicans that, you know, the Trump magic is not going to work here.

Speaker 5 And they better get off their butts and start blocking some of this and delivering for the American people, or they will be out of office very quickly.

Speaker 4 I wonder if maybe I've thought about this all wrong. So I've been thinking about, well, you guys, you run blue states.

Speaker 4 Maybe there's a way, it might be drastic, but a federal tax strike where you say, I've given you $70 billion more than I get back. You're taking money away from me.

Speaker 4 We're going to call a federal.

Speaker 4 We're going to call a federal tax strike. Maybe the idea is you go more the Saudi UAE and you say, Donald Trump, I'm going to let you build whatever you want to build, wherever you want to build it.

Speaker 4 I'm going to give you $10 billion.

Speaker 4 And maybe that's the way to do it. Maybe states need to start bribing him.

Speaker 4 Seems to be the most.

Speaker 4 I see. They need to get real.
Sounds like

Speaker 5 a weird to the heart.

Speaker 4 Have you guys talked about like a federal tax strike or any of those types of things that could force the hand on these issues?

Speaker 5 I think that's a great idea. I talk often about clawing back federal money.
I mean, the easiest place to start with that is in the courts.

Speaker 5 That's the easiest because how people pay taxes is not, you know, there's not some state portal.

Speaker 5 There are areas that you can claw back and freeze. But I think that's something that,

Speaker 5 you know, I know Gavin Newsom brought up how much money California, I would love these, I would love to start to rework the federal taxation system.

Speaker 5 If the federal, you know, as I say, and I think people here in New Jersey agree. you know, if they're not going to run the programs, then what are we paying them for?

Speaker 4 Right. And it's clearly punitive.

Speaker 5 It's like, you know, you're paying us for a service and they're not delivering. So let's stop paying for it.

Speaker 4 But he uses it transactionally. He very clearly uses it as leverage.
If you don't allow me to choose your professors and your curriculum, I'm going to take away this money. Is there any at any point

Speaker 4 or look, Abigail, you had that UVA suffered that UVA president was pushed out for some bullshit idea of their DEI programs.

Speaker 4 And by the way, I've had enough of their, we're only doing it so that these universities fight anti-Semitism.

Speaker 4 This is an administration that allows in people who say they have Nazi streaks, who, you know, anytime that these text messages come that are horrific, they say, oh, kids will be kids.

Speaker 4 Like, you want to clean up anti-Semitism. Physician, heal thyself.
Like, their administration is rife with this nonsense, and yet they use that against your states.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 what is, Abigail, what can you do about

Speaker 4 those things?

Speaker 6 Well, in Virginia, it might be a bit of a unique case, in particular,

Speaker 6 at least relative to some of the private universities that have come under fire, because our universities are public.

Speaker 6 The board of visitors, as we call the governing board in the Commonwealth, are appointed by the governor, and then they have to be confirmed by

Speaker 6 the legislature. And so, right now, at a number of our universities, we have boards that are not fully constituted, as is the case with UVA.

Speaker 6 And in fact, UVA's board, in part because it's not fully constituted, it's missing five members. It's also not statutorily compliant because there's requirements related to residency.

Speaker 6 There's a requirement for a certain number of UVA grads to be on that board. And so they're in the middle of this search process.
Of course,

Speaker 6 they signed on to

Speaker 6 this

Speaker 6 weakened pack.

Speaker 6 uh pact with uh the federal government and you know frankly we're out celebrating that uva doesn't have to pay any sort of damages to the federal government The question is, for what?

Speaker 5 For what?

Speaker 6 And the former president of UVA put out a very, very long letter going through all of the events.

Speaker 4 I thought it was fantastic. I thought it was fantastic.

Speaker 6 It was incredible. And it was something he had written most of it contemporaneously through the events of the summer.

Speaker 6 And he spoke to, and this is important in Virginia, he spoke to the fact that their

Speaker 6 intentionality around recruitment of students

Speaker 6 isn't necessarily related just to the kind of the diversity that people will think of in gender or in race, but in fact, in making sure that if you are from the coal fields of Virginia, you know you can get to the University of Virginia.

Speaker 6 It's not just Northern Virginia kids who make their way there, right? It's that the intentionality of who is coming to study in this place.

Speaker 6 And so as governor, I will be appointing members of the board that

Speaker 6 my goal is that they are studying the ship, but we also need legislative changes.

Speaker 6 Another uniqueness about Virginia is it's our attorney general here in the state who appoints the counsel for each of the universities and so when people question well why is it that you know the university or the president didn't defend themselves well because the university counsel was handpicked by our state attorney general who's doing the bidding for the department of justice it's so hard you know the whole thing is you're basically look at the dances and look at all the things that you guys have to do to battle against things that are happening in your state that are not good faith things.

Speaker 4 They're not being done for for purpose or for government. I mean,

Speaker 5 doge on Virginia.

Speaker 6 I mean, the fact that you have an attack on our entire economy

Speaker 6 and our governor, our current Republican governor and lieutenant governor have said nothing.

Speaker 6 I mean,

Speaker 6 it is an abdication of responsibility.

Speaker 4 The cowardice of those in this current moment

Speaker 4 will be written in stone. But I wanted to just thank you guys, congratulate you guys.

Speaker 4 I know you apparently have states to run now we're a commonwealth in virginia actually i'm sorry uh your excellency i'm sorry her excellency get back to your commonwealth

Speaker 4 uh mikey uh good luck running our state and uh i i just wish you the best but what i'm most pleased with for you is that you both now seem to be in situations where the job is commensurate with your abilities where you're not you're no longer in a house of representatives that's designed to diminish any possibility of action or in places where you can really start to accomplish the things that I think got you into public service in the first place.

Speaker 4 And so just thank you both for being here and congratulations to Mikey Sherrill, the governor-elect of New Jersey, and Abigail Spanberger, the governor-elect of the Commonwealth of Virginia. And

Speaker 4 I hope you have wonderful. I guess reigns would be the right.
No.

Speaker 5 Terms, terms. Terms, terms.
Maybe reigns in Virginia, but terms

Speaker 5 terms of service terms of service uh thank you both thank you well thank you i really appreciate it have a great one

Speaker 4 it is so funny to me you know i've spoken to enough politicians and and been enough there but when they have a personal relationship with each other It immediately transforms the conversation in such pleasant ways.

Speaker 4 Yes. I love the fact they're like, I have two sisters.
She is, oh my God, her sister. She told me, like, you can tell their history.

Speaker 4 It really is like, it's like talking to college friends who have kind of a language and a it absolutely felt that way.

Speaker 7 Yeah. Well, they basically did that.
Yeah. Being roommates and all, but it was nice to have candid politicians on.
Like it felt a little more candid.

Speaker 9 Yeah, they were so lovely and charming, which is very funny considering basically what I know about Mikey before this was from the attack ads that I get from

Speaker 5 the New New York metro area. So it's like Mikey Cheryl as opposed to relentless.
Yeah.

Speaker 4 But also even, you know, unfortunately for her as a candidate, then her ads are not reflective of who she is either. Like you would think at that point, you're like, is New Jersey a helicopter?

Speaker 4 Because from every, like from these ads, the only thing she knows how to do is fly a helicopter.

Speaker 4 But it's not that at all. But what I thought was so interesting about the conversation is it shows how

Speaker 4 the people are the product of the system, not the other way around.

Speaker 4 The system doesn't seem to be a product of the people.

Speaker 4 That has grown and metastasized and become, but you've got really good, effective, smart people neutered by a system that is designed to put all the power up into the

Speaker 4 you know, barely sentient leadership. And that's where it all lies.
And everything that they do are decisions about preserving their own status. And it drives these good people away.

Speaker 9 And it really makes you wonder: like, what's wrong with the people that stay and want to operate within this system

Speaker 5 as it is?

Speaker 7 You know, I really appreciated the candor about Congress. And I actually, a million years ago, interned for Mike Gee's predecessor, who was a moderate Republican.

Speaker 7 And he said behind closed doors to me in the one meeting I had with him as an intern, like, if I could do it over again, I'd do the Foreign Service.

Speaker 7 So, you know, I don't think this is a new idea that people are in love in Congress.

Speaker 4 By the way, like, how sad is the meeting you have with your fresh-faced, bushy-tailed interns

Speaker 4 who are working in a congressional office and the first thing you say to them is, yeah, it's not a life.

Speaker 5 It's not a life. It basically is a

Speaker 5 life.

Speaker 4 It's not a life.

Speaker 4 It's not something that you want.

Speaker 4 That's wild. Brittany, but what do we got from the, this is, we're heading into the break now, the Thanksgiving break.

Speaker 4 What can we do for the listeners on our way out?

Speaker 7 All righty. First up,

Speaker 10 John, when taking on Trump, does Marjorie Taylor Greene have bigger balls than Elon?

Speaker 5 Oh, wow.

Speaker 4 That's such a, I would never even place them on the same, you know, the difference is

Speaker 4 Elon is, you know, he's a masters of the universe guy. He's in that Silicon Valley, like, who is the next? Who is the next Neo that will be the one that will control all the levers of our new society?

Speaker 4 So they're, they're such different things.

Speaker 4 And you can see that Elon would like to repudiate at times. this administration, but also understands the trillion dollar contracts and pay packages.

Speaker 4 And like, if you're in, if your game is, I will have it all, you know,

Speaker 4 those guys are all competing in like a Thanos beauty pageant. Like, they all want to know.

Speaker 4 Marjorie Taylor Green's like just such a very different animal. And by the way, like, good on her for doing that, but like, I'm not exactly, oh, Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Speaker 4 She's so ballsy to stand up to her thing. Like, she also sees where the wind is blowing on this.
I think

Speaker 4 this whole like, and now I'm going to go on the view and pretend like I wasn't who I was.

Speaker 4 It all feels very cynical to me. But again, just getting directly back to the question,

Speaker 4 just I think on a purely physical level, I do think her balls are probably bigger. But that's, I'm, I'm saying this purely anatomically because I know what ketamine does to the testicles.

Speaker 5 Wow.

Speaker 7 Well, at least she's not deleting her tweets about Trump.

Speaker 4 Yes. Yes, that's right.
Like his thing is so cynical. Like even his Grok AI is full full of shit.

Speaker 4 Like if you plug in there, did Elon back out of an interview with the Daily Show? Grok is like, it's complicated.

Speaker 4 He's, he's, you know, it's an interesting question, but he's a busy man with lots of things. Why would he lower himself? And you're just like, all right, fucking ridiculous.

Speaker 7 Oh, I go, that's awesome.

Speaker 5 Yeah. What else?

Speaker 10 John, what do you think about all of the CEOs attending the White House dinner for MBS?

Speaker 4 What did we think they were?

Speaker 4 Honestly,

Speaker 4 like, I don't, I, are people surprised by it? Are people, I cannot believe that the head of Apple, the head of Metwood,

Speaker 4 all the different

Speaker 4 would sit at a state dinner with the guy who is funneling billions and billions of dollars into their businesses.

Speaker 5 Right.

Speaker 4 Donald Trump hosted, you know, this was the whole fucking thing. Do you remember the Mom Dani? You know,

Speaker 4 all these right-wing guys are like, how dare he take a picture with an Imam? Has he forgotten the lessons in 9-11?

Speaker 4 One guy came after me. Has John Stewart, he's talking pleasantly with Mom Dani.
You know, this is a guy. Has he forgotten 9-11? First of all, fuck you.

Speaker 4 Fuck you to the highest order of fucking you that you can be fucked. Don't you ever ask me about that, you fuck.

Speaker 4 And second of all, your guy hosted a live golf tournament in the shadow of the towers with the Saudis and powled around with them. So again, let me repeat myself.

Speaker 4 Fuck

Speaker 4 you.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 4 The guy you support. Like, how, how dare they? It's so shocking.
And by the way, like, I'll even give it up for it.

Speaker 4 If you're a businessman and they've got, you know, a funnel and you've never made the case that your business has any moral underpinnings whatsoever.

Speaker 4 So the idea that you want to hook up your mouth to the largest teats in that area and just suck down as much as that glorious Saudi money as you can get to, but I'm sorry.

Speaker 4 Live golf tournaments are an elective. That is an elective.
You make a choice like that. That is not something that your business requires, that it is foundational.
That is an elective.

Speaker 4 And so, for any of those

Speaker 4 right-wing guys that want to go out there and criticize the associations between,

Speaker 4 you know, anybody that would even talk to him, I'm Donnie, because clearly, you know, he's so out there

Speaker 4 with his points of view.

Speaker 4 Look in the mirror, fuck face.

Speaker 5 Yeah, fuck these people.

Speaker 5 Sorry.

Speaker 5 I love it.

Speaker 4 I probably,

Speaker 4 what I meant to say was, yeah, I haven't thought about it much.

Speaker 7 It is really crazy how

Speaker 7 we shouldn't be surprised at all yet seeing MBS in the Oval Office and Trump saying, don't embarrass our guests or whatever to the reporters. It was just shocking still to my system.

Speaker 5 And also like

Speaker 4 getting handsy with him and grabbing them and playing by the knee, like, and and giving him a noogie and holding on to him and go like hey this khashogi guy you know he was a real troublesome individual no he wasn't just a journalist he was just a journalist who asked questions that were uncomfortable and it's pretty clear that trump wishes he lived in an environment where uh all the little piggies can be taken out to to

Speaker 4 you know to a farm upstate You know what I mean? Like he is so much more comfortable in the trappings of autocracy than he is in the standards of democracy. He just,

Speaker 4 it's when he is at his most congenial. Yeah.

Speaker 4 He loves it. He loves it.
He loves, you know,

Speaker 4 grabbing Putin's hand on the red carpet and giving, you know, MBS a noogie. and having Orban there for a little, they love it.
He loves it.

Speaker 10 What a friend circle.

Speaker 5 My God.

Speaker 5 with ones like these do you think they have a text chain oh my god what would it be called

Speaker 5 uh

Speaker 4 immortals

Speaker 4 mount olympus

Speaker 4 uh circle of godlike you know they believe themselves all to be touched by it's a throwback to noblesse oblige like that is Rite of Kings. That's what these guys think

Speaker 4 it's all about. It's so clear.
His relationship with MBS.

Speaker 4 And I'm not naive enough to think, like, oh, look,

Speaker 4 Saudi Arabia is, we're allied with them. We've been that way.
And like pretending that like we're horrified at their actions, like even the idea of Biden, like to, he wanted to do the fist bump.

Speaker 4 Like, oh, you know, I don't like the fact that you killed people, so I'm not going to give you the whole hand. I'm just going to give a fist bump.

Speaker 4 And that's what Trump was making reference to when he was grabbing them and holding them and all that other shit. But

Speaker 4 there are electives and there are are prerequisites and required courses.

Speaker 4 And, you know, I'm not naive enough to think this country doesn't do things or have relationships with people that are in a lot of different ways beneath the standard of, you know, moral behavior that we purport to carry ourselves with.

Speaker 4 But

Speaker 4 there's a difference between that and gleefully embracing the trappings of it.

Speaker 7 He loves this shit.

Speaker 4 It's not more honest. It's not more authentic.

Speaker 4 It reveals the world you'd rather live in. He has much more respect for strong men

Speaker 4 than he does for constitutionalists by far.

Speaker 9 Yeah, I would think Donald Trump would be more upset with what Saudi Arabia did to the PGA tour than to any journalists.

Speaker 5 No question.

Speaker 4 And by the way, he loves what they did with Live, and that's why he hosts,

Speaker 4 it's great, it's entertaining

Speaker 4 near near, you know, the towers where the towers were. And yet, all these right-wing guys are out there screaming about photos being taken.

Speaker 7 You know, yeah, it's so disingenuous.

Speaker 10 Hypocrisy at its finest.

Speaker 4 Yeah, sorry.

Speaker 4 I got a little hot there.

Speaker 5 I love it.

Speaker 9 Yeah. Take him down.

Speaker 5 What I want, baby.

Speaker 10 To get us into the holiday spirit.

Speaker 5 Yes.

Speaker 5 Easy pivot. Easy pivot.

Speaker 5 Thank you.

Speaker 10 John, do you think Ozempic will be better or worse for Thanksgiving dinners moving forward?

Speaker 4 What an interesting question.

Speaker 4 I guess it depends on if I guess it depends on if the turkeys are on it.

Speaker 4 What an interesting thing for Americans. You know, it's basically a holiday that is, you know, turkeys were like the turkeys that we get are not what turkeys are supposed to be.

Speaker 4 Like, if you ever look at the, you know, the heritage turkeys of the American past, like

Speaker 4 they don't, they're, they were not giant breasted dumbasses that waddled around.

Speaker 7 No, they were on Ozempic.

Speaker 4 They were, they were, they were, they were free range. So

Speaker 4 I guess the point is the Ozempic is merely to get us out of a pickle that we put ourselves in.

Speaker 5 Like

Speaker 4 the whole, the orgy of food that comes along with Thanksgiving is in many ways,

Speaker 4 you know, like it used to be like, let's do that once a year to celebrate that we didn't get smallpox. And now we put it on the table because

Speaker 4 it's Thursday and Boston Market had a special. So let's.

Speaker 4 you know, it will be, I wonder if it will have a demonstrable effect on the amount of food we buy as a nation. But also, I do wonder if you're going to start seeing like Jetsons-like,

Speaker 4 you know, meal in a pill that has all the nutrients that they think you might not.

Speaker 4 They're going to find a way to monetize it. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 4 This has gotten very dark.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 4 Guys, I hope you guys have a wonderful. You got everybody got good plans for the holidays?

Speaker 6 I'm going to eat a lot.

Speaker 4 We do the cooking.

Speaker 4 We're the hosts every year and we bring it's it's my favorite holiday. We get all family together.
We get a big group. Everybody goes crazy eats and it's it's a it's it's my favorite

Speaker 4 for sure.

Speaker 10 What's your favorite side?

Speaker 5 Oh,

Speaker 4 it's got to be the sweet potato pie. I'm a sweet potato pie with cranberry.

Speaker 4 You know, I love the cranberry sweet potato pie.

Speaker 4 all those different things. And then obviously, like, I'm a pie, like what any kind of pie.

Speaker 4 come on are you waiting for the end of thanksgiving yes i don't i don't eat i you know i have my one frozen protein meal yes exactly and then i just sniff the pie

Speaker 4 that's enough for me that's right uh and to the audience too i hope you guys have a wonderful thanksgiving uh we got no podcast uh next week there and to everybody uh who's been listening and all that we are very thankful for you but mostly i am thankful for the people that helped put this thing thing together every week and do such a phenomenal job for it.

Speaker 4 And those are the ones that you've been talking to and some others as well.

Speaker 4 We got our lead producer, Lauren Walker, our producer, Brittany Mamedovic, producer Jillian Speer, video editor and engineer Rob Vitolo, audio editor and engineer Nicole Boyce, and our executive producers Chris McShane and Katie Gray.

Speaker 4 Have a wonderful holiday, and we'll see you back in, I guess they call it December, early December.

Speaker 5 Bye, guys.

Speaker 4 The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart is a comedy central podcast. It's produced by Paramount Audio and Busboy Productions.

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