Speaker 1: How frightening is this to you?
Speaker 2: Pretty frightening? And look, I'm going to steal this from
Speaker 2: Charlie Sykes, but I think it's well said. He said,
Speaker 2: I am not optimistic, but I am hopeful. And that's
Speaker 2: how I feel, which is I look back at history
Speaker 2: and I know every time we faced like dark moments,
Speaker 2: we've come through them. I mean, one took a civil war,
Speaker 2: but we've come through those moments and actually come out stronger.
Speaker 1: Hi. Everyone, I'm Kitty Kuric, and this is next question.
Speaker 1: Donald Trump has been president now for one hundred days,
Speaker 1: and if you listen to the polls, a lot of
Speaker 1: Americans are very unhappy with his performance so far. One
Speaker 1: of those Americans is Adam Kinsinger, former congressman and current
Speaker 1: critic of the Trump administration. Adam, thanks so much for
Speaker 1: joining us. It's great to see you, and we have
Speaker 1: a lot to talk about.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I good to be with you. Yeah, we really did.
Speaker 2: It's been crazy.
Speaker 1: Now that Donald Trump has been in office for one
Speaker 1: hundred days. How would you describe the first few months
Speaker 1: of the Trump administration?
Speaker 2: Well, okay, so I'll give you two different things, my
Speaker 2: opinion versus just like objectively, how is he done. My opinion,
Speaker 2: this is way worse than anything I imagined. I was
Speaker 2: trying to warn the Democrats basically between Trump's victory and
Speaker 2: inauguration day, like you guys need to get your ducks
Speaker 2: in a row because this thing could go fast. Right.
Speaker 2: One of my biggest frustrations, and I think this is why, frankly,
Speaker 2: so many Democrats are upset, is because you know, Donald
Speaker 2: Trump gets inaugurated. Doge, this fake agency Doge gets created
Speaker 2: out of thin air, and then for about two weeks
Speaker 2: Congress is out of session and Democrats went home and
Speaker 2: so like all this that was going on was happening
Speaker 2: with no opposition in place, and I think that created
Speaker 2: a lot of fury. And for me, it bothered me
Speaker 2: because I'm like, look, guys, we were warning you this
Speaker 2: was going to happen. It is Project twenty twenty five.
Speaker 2: They had the playbook out there. So his rapid advancement
Speaker 2: in terms of kind of illiberalism authoritarianism has been beyond
Speaker 2: what I even expected objectively. So taking my opinion out
Speaker 2: and saying how is he done tactically, Well, if your
Speaker 2: goal is illiberalism, if your goal is you know, authoritarianism,
Speaker 2: he's done a great job getting there, right. That's that
Speaker 2: if your goal is as strong America with strong alliances
Speaker 2: that's respected in the world, he gets a terrible job.
Speaker 2: If your goal is if your interest is the economy,
Speaker 2: the US economy, he's done a terrible job. So I'll
Speaker 2: just say this, it is really bad for the United
Speaker 2: States of America right now. I think we can get
Speaker 2: out of this, but I think we're in for a
Speaker 2: few years where it's going to be rough, and frankly,
Speaker 2: we have to have these conversations about what is lawful,
Speaker 2: right and actually effective resistance to this.
Speaker 1: Well, let's talk about the role of the Democrats and
Speaker 1: their failure to provide a bulwark against many of these actions.
Speaker 1: If you could go back in time, and of course
Speaker 1: hindsight is twenty twenty, what should the Democrats have done
Speaker 1: in terms of organizing to create some cohesive resistance.
Speaker 2: Well, I think it's first important to say, look, the election.
Speaker 2: There's this idea that it was a blowout by Trump.
Speaker 2: It wasn't. I mean, you know, butterfly effect. If two
Speaker 2: weeks prior a bird would have sneezed a different direction, right,
Speaker 2: you know, Trump could have lost. It was one percent
Speaker 2: in every one of the swing states, and one percent
Speaker 2: can change on a dime. So it was a close election.
Speaker 2: What could they have done between that election and inauguration
Speaker 2: day is I think be ready for what was coming
Speaker 2: and have a plan, plan to not go home. Look,
Speaker 2: when you're in the minority, really this is in the House. Now,
Speaker 2: keep in mind, actually the majority is so close that
Speaker 2: the minority. In this case, the Democrats actually have a
Speaker 2: little more power because they only need to peel off
Speaker 2: a couple of Republicans. But generally speaking, you know, the
Speaker 2: first time I was in the minority in the House,
Speaker 2: one thing we learned is you're weapon is messaging and
Speaker 2: that's it. You know, yes, you can vote no on everything,
Speaker 2: and you will vote no on everything, but your ability
Speaker 2: to message is what's important. So that message should have
Speaker 2: been put together. They should have determined that when session
Speaker 2: went out after frankly January sixth, and then after inauguration,
Speaker 2: they should have stayed in DC. And then let me
Speaker 2: give you an example. All of a sudden, doge is
Speaker 2: running wild in these different agencies. Right, they should have
Speaker 2: been there on day one. They eventually did it. On
Speaker 2: day one. They should have gone to every one of
Speaker 2: these agencies demanded entrance. If by then Doge would have
Speaker 2: had their ducks together and prevented them entry, they should
Speaker 2: have then turned around, made a big deal about it,
Speaker 2: turned around, gone to the DC courts, and gotten a
Speaker 2: court order for entry. There is no legal merit or
Speaker 2: legal reason for a member of Congress to be denied
Speaker 2: entry into an organization or into agency. Yeah, a federal
Speaker 2: agency that they oversee that the courts would take their side.
Speaker 2: You do those battles. You're messaging repeatedly on the floor.
Speaker 2: You're messaging repeatedly to every media outlet you can, whether
Speaker 2: it's mainstream media, even whether it's some of these podcasts.
Speaker 2: You put your best messengers out there. And the other
Speaker 2: thing I'll say this is just kind of generally speaking,
Speaker 2: Democrats have to win the working class back again. And
Speaker 2: I know within the Democratic Party I've paid attention to it,
Speaker 2: there's this kind of battle between well, the problem is
Speaker 2: we didn't turn out the left enough, you know, and
Speaker 2: we shouldn't have gone after Republicans versus. I don't believe that, right.
Speaker 2: I think the reality is a lot of Republicans voted
Speaker 2: Democratic this time, but you're losing. The Democrats are losing
Speaker 2: the working class and that was their bread and butter.
Speaker 2: That's what they've got to get back and men, working
Speaker 2: class and men.
Speaker 1: And I'd love to dig into that a little bit more.
Speaker 1: But first, don't you think the Democrats need a cohesive,
Speaker 1: coherent message? In other words, media is so fragmented, as
Speaker 1: you know, and it seems that not only did they
Speaker 1: not do enough in the early days of the administration
Speaker 1: some of the things that you've suggested, but the messaging
Speaker 1: seems to be all over the place. And that is
Speaker 1: one thing that Republicans and MAGA specifically has done well,
Speaker 1: very general, easy to understand messaging and cohesive messaging across
Speaker 1: all their messengers and all their platforms.
Speaker 2: You know. The funny thing is, when I was in Congress,
Speaker 2: we always thought the Democrats were better at this than us,
Speaker 2: and honestly they were until recently. So for Democrats, again,
Speaker 2: my advice is go back to what you used to
Speaker 2: think on this stuff, right, you would have pretty strict messages.
Speaker 2: Let me give you an example of a message that
Speaker 2: I think can work that works for the Republicans. How
Speaker 2: many times have we heard the term Biden crime family. Okay,
Speaker 2: now you can look and say well, what are Biden's crimes. Well,
Speaker 2: they never proved any crimes, but the moniker of Biden
Speaker 2: crime family stuck and that made it out of just
Speaker 2: the Fox News realm, that made it everywhere. The reality
Speaker 2: is Trump has a crime family. I mean, you look
Speaker 2: at the stuff that's going on with crypto, the dinner
Speaker 2: he's throwing for his own meme coin, the fact that
Speaker 2: a Chinese billionaire or millionaire who had a crypto investigation
Speaker 2: against him had that dropped after buying some Trump crypto,
Speaker 2: and you look through Don Junior is on the board
Speaker 2: of Calshe, which is a political betting website. I could
Speaker 2: go on and on.
Speaker 1: Well, what about Dave McCormick having a huge investment in
Speaker 1: being the member of the Senate who's overseeing crypto regulation.
Speaker 2: Absolutely that, Absolutely that. And you think of Elon Musk, right,
Speaker 2: who's willing to go in, take a chainsaw, tell you
Speaker 2: everything that you can live without in the federal government,
Speaker 2: while ensuring that his SpaceX and even Tesla contracts are protected,
Speaker 2: if not even more robust. We're continuing this mission to Mars,
Speaker 2: which look, I'm all for trying to go to Mars,
Speaker 2: but we're continuing this mission while we're cutting food stamps
Speaker 2: and everything else. And so I think the issue of
Speaker 2: corruption is not just a talking point, it's a reality.
Speaker 2: And I honestly think if we go forward ten years
Speaker 2: and look back on this administration, the theme that will
Speaker 2: be a thread throughout it is corruption. It's like when
Speaker 2: you think Nixon, you think of corruption. That's I think
Speaker 2: that what the Democrats have got to focus on.
Speaker 1: So how do they do that in a pithy, short
Speaker 1: sentence or in the kind of earworm that Donald Trump
Speaker 1: is so good at creating, for example, fake news that
Speaker 1: became this earworm that every time there was something that
Speaker 1: was critical of him or his administration, everyone who supported
Speaker 1: him would accuse the media of fake news. So how
Speaker 1: do you do one of those clever, short, catchy phrases.
Speaker 1: Would you say, Trump crime family, give us some ideas.
Speaker 1: I know you're not in marketing, but that's what they need,
Speaker 1: isn't it?
Speaker 2: It is? And so let's take the issue of fake news.
Speaker 2: Now fake news when you think of it, now, what
Speaker 2: you think about is Donald Trump calling the news media fake?
Speaker 2: Do you actually know where fake news came from? It
Speaker 2: was the idea of misinformation. It actually was fake news.
Speaker 2: So it's when we were talking about Russian misinformation for instance.
Speaker 2: Or you know, if somebody created a fake news website
Speaker 2: and they wrote a fake story and then that gets
Speaker 2: picked up by you know, the media or whatever. That's
Speaker 2: what fake news was. It was legitimately fake news. He
Speaker 2: took that and turned it into his thing, because he
Speaker 2: does that just by shamelessness and repeatedly repeating things and
Speaker 2: so to his people. And by the way, it doesn't
Speaker 2: happen in a month. It happens in like three or
Speaker 2: four years. That's the other thing. You've got to have
Speaker 2: patience for the long game here. So I think one
Speaker 2: example is Biden crime family is stuck. Why don't we
Speaker 2: do Trump crime family or something related to that that
Speaker 2: can stick Trump criminals, the criminal Trump family, the Trump
Speaker 2: crime family, whatever it is, and stick to that message.
Speaker 2: And understand that's going to take two to four years
Speaker 2: to stick, but we've got to stick with it. It's
Speaker 2: just like, look the whole idea of you know, we're
Speaker 2: one hundred days in. Donald Trump has terrible poll numbers,
Speaker 2: people are still upset. Forty percent of America still likes him. Okay,
Speaker 2: let's look at what we've gained, which is he's historically unpopular.
Speaker 2: A lot of runway in front of us. Just understand,
Speaker 2: this stuff takes time, but you've got to be disciplined
Speaker 2: about it, and they're very disciplined. The other side is, well.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about these polls. The ABC Washington Post IPSOS
Speaker 1: poll shows his approval rating is thirty nine percent. Now,
Speaker 1: that's the lowest rating of any newly elected president at
Speaker 1: the one hundred day mark since Dwight D. Eisenhower. And
Speaker 1: the CNN poll just twenty two percent say they strongly
Speaker 1: approve of his handling and the job. Forty five percent
Speaker 1: they strongly disapprove. So when you read these polls, and
Speaker 1: there have been a number of them that have come
Speaker 1: out at this one hundred day mark, tell us what
Speaker 1: you extrapolate from them.
Speaker 2: So there's really two big issues within that that I
Speaker 2: think should be warning science for the Republicans. Number one
Speaker 2: is Trump always won on the issue of the economy.
Speaker 2: He's now well, actually very significantly underwater on the issue
Speaker 2: of the economy. Now, again, keep in mind when you
Speaker 2: say economy, that means different things to different people. But
Speaker 2: what it shows is Americans right now feel very anxious
Speaker 2: about where the economy's at They did not feel this
Speaker 2: way at the very beginning of January. So that's one thing.
Speaker 2: The other thing is the issue of immigration. Donald Trump
Speaker 2: was always winning on the issue of immigration. Now again immigration.
Speaker 2: If you just say that to somebody, it may mean
Speaker 2: a different thing to me than it means to you know,
Speaker 2: even my wife. But he was always above He's now
Speaker 2: underwater on the issue of immigration. What does that mean. Well,
Speaker 2: people still probably want border security. I think that's pretty
Speaker 2: universally desired. I also think the vast majority of Americans
Speaker 2: want a pathway to legalization for folks that are here illegally,
Speaker 2: not necessarily citizenship in the first ten years, but legalization
Speaker 2: and then eventually citizenship. And so people are kind of
Speaker 2: looking at this going okay, this like heartless deportation that's
Speaker 2: going on. And look, it's one thing to say we
Speaker 2: think people that are herely should be deported. Okay, that's
Speaker 2: a defendable position. What I think is indefensible is the
Speaker 2: White House putting out ASMR videos where they're dragging a
Speaker 2: chain and they're like, isn't this amazing? Or Christy Nomes
Speaker 2: going to the JLNL Salvador and standing in front of it,
Speaker 2: so we all feel good about how terribly people are
Speaker 2: being treated. And look, the MAGA hardcore base may love that.
Speaker 2: Unfortunately they do, the vast majority of Americans don't. Those
Speaker 2: are two warning signs. And if you go even deeper
Speaker 2: within that, where Donald Trump is taking big hits are
Speaker 2: with the youth, which he never should have won, but
Speaker 2: he came pretty close to winning. And then specifically among Hispanics.
Speaker 2: And it's not necessarily because of immigration that he's lost
Speaker 2: ground with Hispanics. I think a lot of that is
Speaker 2: economy related, but those are some of his biggest areas.
Speaker 1: Let's dig into immigration for a moment, Adam, because it's
Speaker 1: not only heartless but in many cases illegal. Can you
Speaker 1: talk about due process and I know that many Americans
Speaker 1: probably a theoretical term when they hear those two words,
Speaker 1: but talk about how important it is to convey that
Speaker 1: this is being done illegally and unconstitutionally.
Speaker 2: Well, let me put it this way. If you're driving
Speaker 2: in a fifty five mile an hour zone and you're
Speaker 2: going seventy five and you get pulled over, and let's
Speaker 2: say the penalty over nineteen miles an hour is arrest
Speaker 2: in jail Okay, let's say you get arrested, you go
Speaker 2: to jail. The one thing you know, even as a
Speaker 2: law abiding citizen, is you'll have an opportunity to go
Speaker 2: to court. You'll have an opportunity to maybe negotiate that down,
Speaker 2: pay some kind of penalty or whatever. Imagine if we
Speaker 2: lived in a country that said, if the police officer
Speaker 2: says that you did twenty miles an hour over the
Speaker 2: speed limit, you don't get a trial, you don't get
Speaker 2: an opportunity to defend yourself. You're automatically guilty in one
Speaker 2: year in jail. What does that do. Well, if that's
Speaker 2: the penalty and you get pulled over for doing twenty over,
Speaker 2: you're going to serve the time. But let's say an
Speaker 2: officer just says you did twenty over and you weren't
Speaker 2: doing it, you have no ability to defend yourself. That's
Speaker 2: the situation when it comes to immigration. You know, look
Speaker 2: what they do is they're taking the people that are
Speaker 2: in generally you know, may have connections to organized crime,
Speaker 2: maybe broke the law here besides just coming illegally, and
Speaker 2: they're breaking due process. They're not giving due processes people
Speaker 2: and they're saying, wait, what you want due process for
Speaker 2: this guy who is a member of a gang. What
Speaker 2: about you know, this person who was killed by a
Speaker 2: gang member. This person didn't have due process. All of
Speaker 2: that's true, But what they're doing is trying to get
Speaker 2: you to focus on the badness of a person and
Speaker 2: not the fact that everybody in the United States of
Speaker 2: America gets a chance to plea their case. Now, very well,
Speaker 2: if you're a member of MS thirteen, for instance, and
Speaker 2: the government can prove it, you're going to probably be deported,
Speaker 2: as you should be, but you should still have a
Speaker 2: right to make your case. And look, the Constitution does
Speaker 2: not delineate between US citizens in the United States of
Speaker 2: America or any people in the United States of America.
Speaker 2: And so when you break due process for the least
Speaker 2: of these, like the Bible says, whatever you do for
Speaker 2: the least of these, you do under me. Here's the
Speaker 2: other thing, all of these little things we're doing little
Speaker 2: steps towards authoritarianism or towards illiberalism, whatever you want to
Speaker 2: call it. Each step in and of itself is not
Speaker 2: enough to be outraged to the point of take to
Speaker 2: the streets in general, strike right, But in cumulation they
Speaker 2: are and when you say to somebody, we're gonna not
Speaker 2: do due process for this bad person. Well, next thing,
Speaker 2: it's okay, we're not gonna do due process because we
Speaker 2: already did it for the bags, for the people that
Speaker 2: are here illegally. And then well, there are enemies of
Speaker 2: the state, and I get it, they're American citizens, but
Speaker 2: you know they were Palestinian rallies or whatever. And then
Speaker 2: next it's Adam Kinsinger. He's a Rhino and he went
Speaker 2: against the president. And the next thing it's you. That's
Speaker 2: how these little steps, each of which is not enough
Speaker 2: to spark massive outrage, but in cumulation is as as
Speaker 2: they said, you know, and again I don't want to
Speaker 2: make comparisons to Nazi Germany, but in this case it's
Speaker 2: a good example, which is, if in nineteen thirty five
Speaker 2: they'd have opened concentration camps, the German public would have rebelled.
Speaker 2: But if you just boil the frog to the point
Speaker 2: where you open it in and of itself, you get
Speaker 2: yourself to a point where it's not outrageous enough.
Speaker 1: How frightening is this to you?
Speaker 2: Uh? Pretty frightening. And look, I'm going to steal this
Speaker 2: from Charlie Sykes, But I think it's well said, he said.
Speaker 2: I am not optimistic, but I am hopeful. And that's
Speaker 2: how I feel, which is I look back at history,
Speaker 2: and I know every time we've faced like dark moments,
Speaker 2: we've come through them. I mean, one took a civil war,
Speaker 2: but we've come through those moments and actually come out stronger.
Speaker 2: So I have no reason to believe that the American
Speaker 2: people have fundamentally their DNA has changed, that we're not
Speaker 2: going to come back out of this stronger. Three and
Speaker 2: a half years seems like forever when you're on this
Speaker 2: side of it, but once it's past, you look back
Speaker 2: and it goes by in an instant. And I mean,
Speaker 2: by the way, we're one hundred days in and already
Speaker 2: millions of Americans have taken to the streets in almost
Speaker 2: every organized town and city in this country. Those are
Speaker 2: good science, but our defensive democracy is not automatic. And
Speaker 2: that's where I'm very concerned, is, you know, we have
Speaker 2: to step up. A judge in Wisconsin is arrested, Like
Speaker 2: some of this stuff is outrageous and we've grown numb
Speaker 2: to it.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about the arrest of that Wisconsin judge, Hannah
Speaker 1: Dugan who was arrested by the FBI on suspicion that
Speaker 1: she had steered an undocumented immigrant through a side door
Speaker 1: to evade federal agents. Why is that such an outrage
Speaker 1: in your view?
Speaker 2: So it's two things. First Off, I didn't know it
Speaker 2: was illegal to, you know, kind of hide somebody that
Speaker 2: has not been convicted necessarily by the Feds they wanted
Speaker 2: to deport them. I don't know all the details, but
Speaker 2: is this saying that if you know somebody who's illegal
Speaker 2: and they're at your house and the police come, that
Speaker 2: it's illegal to say they're not there. That's kind of chilling,
Speaker 2: to be honest with you, if it's like that. But secondarily,
Speaker 2: simply the fact that ICE in general has always kind
Speaker 2: of had an unspoken rule or maybe spoken rule with
Speaker 2: local jurisdictions that they won't enforce there. Because what you
Speaker 2: want to do is first off, tell anybody that's in
Speaker 2: the country illegally that they can still use the judicial system.
Speaker 2: Maybe they're a victim of a crime. Right if you
Speaker 2: have a rape victim, for instance, who's an illegal immigrant,
Speaker 2: are they going to go to the law enforcement if
Speaker 2: they know that ICE is camped out right there and
Speaker 2: ready to deport them. And then the other thing is
Speaker 2: just look, I'll say this is an old school former
Speaker 2: Republican is like, we actually used to believe in sovereignty
Speaker 2: of states. We actually used to believe that states had
Speaker 2: a certain power that the federal government didn't. And so
Speaker 2: the idea that the Feds are going to come in
Speaker 2: and say we're going to arrest a duly elected, by
Speaker 2: the way, not appointed, a duly elected judge in Milwaukee
Speaker 2: is very chilling. And Plus, I think Carol Levitt or
Speaker 2: somebody today or yesterday said that they wouldn't hesitate to
Speaker 2: arrest a Supreme Court justice that they said would violate
Speaker 2: the law. And again, the question isn't yeah, okay, if
Speaker 2: John Roberts murdered somebody, you can arrest John Roberts. They're
Speaker 2: not talking about that. They are defining what is breaking
Speaker 2: the law and what isn't. Look, I'm called a lawbreaker
Speaker 2: why because I was on a committee that investigated January sixth.
Speaker 2: In Donald Trump's mind, I am a criminal for investigating him.
Speaker 2: So do we really want to leave them with the
Speaker 2: power to determine what a crime is and what's arrestable.
Speaker 2: That's why it's extremely chilling.
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Speaker 1: have to ask you about the removal of three children
Speaker 1: who are US citizens by Ice, as well as their
Speaker 1: mothers from this country last Friday. One, a four year
Speaker 1: old with stage four cancer, was sent without medication or
Speaker 1: the ability to contact their doctors. According to their lawyer,
Speaker 1: this is yet another major story about people lawfully living
Speaker 1: in this country being forced to leave, another chilling example of,
Speaker 1: to say the least, overreach by the administration.
Speaker 2: It's complete overreach. And again, the other bigger point on
Speaker 2: this is it's complete heartlessness. I mean, look, if when
Speaker 2: you look at in essence, all the periods of American history,
Speaker 2: even when we did pretty evil things, like the people
Speaker 2: that did evil things in many cases thought they were
Speaker 2: I don't know, maybe they thought they were doing the
Speaker 2: right thing whatever. But like for us to now say,
Speaker 2: you know what, we sent a kid who's an American
Speaker 2: citizen and has stage four cancers, Oh well, their parents
Speaker 2: shouldn't have been illegal. I mean, what does that say
Speaker 2: about the heart of America? Like, that's what concerns me.
Speaker 2: You know, the one thing that the United States had
Speaker 2: over it that I think is better than what you
Speaker 2: have over generic country A or B, whatever it is,
Speaker 2: is that in everything we did, even when we got
Speaker 2: it wrong. You know, when we intervened in areas we
Speaker 2: probably shouldn't have created a war or whatever. Each time,
Speaker 2: though we did it under the belief that we were
Speaker 2: doing the right thing, or at least the American people
Speaker 2: thought we were doing the right thing. We've shed now
Speaker 2: this belief that we are a moral country, and we've
Speaker 2: now allowed our base instincts to take over. Okay, I've
Speaker 2: always said, like humanity has a battle in their heart
Speaker 2: every year day, each one of us. Do you have
Speaker 2: a battle of light and darkness? Right? You know you
Speaker 2: have to kind of fight the divisive thoughts that the
Speaker 2: negative thoughts and try to have light overcome it. But
Speaker 2: darkness is so much easier to embrace. If you embrace darkness.
Speaker 2: It's easy. You can let somebody else do it. You
Speaker 2: can let all those really base instincts of hate, of division,
Speaker 2: of fear take over and rule your life. The problem
Speaker 2: is it's really destructive to you, to your family and
Speaker 2: to the community. And that's where we're at as a
Speaker 2: nation now, is letting those destructive tendencies take over and
Speaker 2: that complete heartlessness. And so do they have a legal
Speaker 2: right to deport a kid with an illegal mother that
Speaker 2: maybe wants our kid to go with her? You know,
Speaker 2: I don't. There's nuances. I don't know, but I know
Speaker 2: that we were a country in the past that if
Speaker 2: there was a legal US citizen, we certainly wouldn't deport
Speaker 2: them and can't. And that's a big concern to me,
Speaker 2: is because again you go into these like little steps
Speaker 2: and what do they ultimately end up. Well, let's start
Speaker 2: deporting enemies of the state, which Donald Trump's already said
Speaker 2: he wants to do.
Speaker 1: He does have the lowest approval rating for any president
Speaker 1: in his first one hundred days since Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Speaker 1: What do you think, Adam, it will take for his
Speaker 1: hardcore magabase to flip.
Speaker 2: If the hardcore magabase flips. It will be because of
Speaker 2: a devastating economy, a devastating economy that you can absolutely
Speaker 2: pin on him, right, So, all of a sudden, this
Speaker 2: is quite possible. We have real shortages of things like
Speaker 2: toilet paper. It reminds us of COVID and the supply
Speaker 2: chain issues there. I mean, we're finding out that, you know,
Speaker 2: shipments that are supposed to be arriving on the West
Speaker 2: Coast are already either significantly gone or have much less
Speaker 2: inventory coming in. That trickle down effect to the railroads,
Speaker 2: to the truckers, to the grocery store, and to the
Speaker 2: Walgreens or Cbs is pretty devastating. You know, in rural America,
Speaker 2: for instance, what did they do with the farm economy?
Speaker 2: What happens there? Do we end up in a nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety five farmedy. I mean, I was raised in the Midwest.
Speaker 2: Mid nineties were awful for the farm economy, and it's
Speaker 2: when a lot of the family businesses went out and
Speaker 2: you saw the big corporations come in and take them over.
Speaker 2: I also think though the hardcore Magas may stick with him,
Speaker 2: you know, through thick and thin, but of the people
Speaker 2: that voted for him, a significant part is the MAGA base,
Speaker 2: But there's a part here that is just kind of
Speaker 2: I've talked to a lot of them that are like,
Speaker 2: I don't like him, but I didn't like Joe Biden,
Speaker 2: and the economy was better under Trump.
Speaker 1: And I didn't like Kamala Harris.
Speaker 2: Right, And I didn't like Kamala Harris. And it's like, okay, well,
Speaker 2: I mean you have a right to vote for Trump.
Speaker 2: Those are the first that are going to go. And
Speaker 2: I think you're already seeing them start to peel off,
Speaker 2: which is like, yeah, maybe they didn't like some of
Speaker 2: the social policies of Kamala or Biden or whatever it is,
Speaker 2: but you automatically made this assumption that the economy was
Speaker 2: going to be good. So it's like Maslow's hierarchy, Right,
Speaker 2: the economy is here. If you assume that's gonna be good,
Speaker 2: then you can start voting on these little self actualization
Speaker 2: things that bother you. Right, Well, all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: if the economy collapses and crumbles, you're going back into
Speaker 2: the base instinctom I got to protect my family, and
Speaker 2: I think that does a lot of damage to him.
Speaker 2: He may not personally care about his approval ratings because look,
Speaker 2: he's not going to run again. He may want to,
Speaker 2: and he may try to.
Speaker 1: There's certainly a lot of noise about that, Adam.
Speaker 2: There is. I still believe in this case the Constitution
Speaker 2: and the Supreme Court is actually strong enough to deny him.
Speaker 2: I think where the battle could be is what happens
Speaker 2: in different states when they have to make the decision.
Speaker 2: So we can talk about that, but I think the
Speaker 2: bottom line is he may not care about his polling,
Speaker 2: but the people that will are the Republicans in Congress
Speaker 2: that now, all of a sudden, this is why things
Speaker 2: like town halls and protests are so important, because we
Speaker 2: have to send a message to these members of Congress
Speaker 2: that they should fear politically, not physically, should fear their
Speaker 2: constituents more than they fear Donald Trump. Katie, I hated
Speaker 2: doing town hall meetings. I hated them. Why because I
Speaker 2: had to stand in front of people and just fi
Speaker 2: what I did. I would do them, but I hated them.
Speaker 2: That's why you have to do it. That's why your
Speaker 2: member of Congress has to come in front of you,
Speaker 2: because they work for you and they deserve to give
Speaker 2: you answers. And by the way, if that whole crowd
Speaker 2: is a bunch of people that don't like that congressman, okay,
Speaker 2: you know what, he or she could turn out people
Speaker 2: that support them, but those people aren't as motivated. And
Speaker 2: if they're not doing town halls, force them to. And
Speaker 2: if they say they're going to do a telephone town
Speaker 2: hall instead, that's not a real town hall. You can
Speaker 2: totally control a telephone town hall. That's an old trick.
Speaker 1: By the way, I was going to ask you why
Speaker 1: you hated doing town halls, because ostensibly you thought you
Speaker 1: were doing the right thing and defending what you did
Speaker 1: in Congress should not have been that difficult, was it.
Speaker 2: So keep in mind the majority of the town halls
Speaker 2: I had to do. The people that would turn out
Speaker 2: to yell at me were kind of the far right, okay,
Speaker 2: because at that time the Democrats in the left, they
Speaker 2: may have liked me as a Republican, but they weren't
Speaker 2: going to really support me. I always had battles with
Speaker 2: the right. So I would have to stand in front
Speaker 2: and justify why to raise the debt limit, for instance,
Speaker 2: and they would go apoplectic and I would have to
Speaker 2: explain to them how you have to raise a debt
Speaker 2: limit that's just a requirement, or how you can't solve
Speaker 2: the federal budget in one year. So it's not fun
Speaker 2: to do. I mean, like standing in front and doing
Speaker 2: it is not fun to do. But I recognized that
Speaker 2: I got paid to do that. I got paid to
Speaker 2: be accountable to the people that sent me to Washington, DC.
Speaker 2: And if I didn't want to do it anymore, and
Speaker 2: eventually I didn't want to do it anymore, and I
Speaker 2: didn't run again of a district of seven hundred thousand people,
Speaker 2: there's somebody that can replace me.
Speaker 1: I'm just curious. You say that members of Congress have
Speaker 1: to fear their constituents more than Donald Trump, and Lisa
Speaker 1: Murkowski talked about that at a town hall meeting, how
Speaker 1: fearful she was about retribution from the White House. Are
Speaker 1: you starting to see Republican members of Congress Adam stand
Speaker 1: up and fight against Trump and are you hopeful more
Speaker 1: will do so in the near future.
Speaker 2: It's a tough question to answer. I can't say. You know,
Speaker 2: Lisa Murkowski is one of the shining stars I think
Speaker 2: of Republicans that's willing to tell the truth and willing
Speaker 2: to vote her conscience when I think of the House.
Speaker 2: I mean, look, there's a few in there. You think
Speaker 2: of people like Don Bacon or Brian Fitzpatrick specifically on
Speaker 2: the issue of Ukraine, for instance, that are out there
Speaker 2: being very aggressive on Ukraine, and so I give credit
Speaker 2: to that. But at the same time, look and I go,
Speaker 2: many of these people lived through and sat through January
Speaker 2: sixth and sat through the investigation, put out statements about
Speaker 2: how the investigation was somehow partisan or whatever. And so
Speaker 2: I'll be honest, I don't really see indications that people
Speaker 2: are willing to step up yet. I think they're so
Speaker 2: frozen in fear. And I think the thing we have
Speaker 2: to remember is Donald Trump still feels like a new
Speaker 2: phenomenon to us, but he's been in the system for
Speaker 2: about ten years now, and over those ten years, they've
Speaker 2: been able to shake out anybody with any independent thought,
Speaker 2: anybody with any courage, anybody that's willing to tell the truth,
Speaker 2: and they've basically formed a party like a cult in
Speaker 2: its own image. So am I hopeful that people wake up?
Speaker 2: I guess, like, yeah, I want to remain hopeful, but
Speaker 2: I guess I haven't seen many indications of that yet.
Speaker 2: With Lisa Markowski being a rare exception. I just want
Speaker 2: to say this too. If you're scared in the job,
Speaker 2: get a different job. Like the thing is, it doesn't
Speaker 2: pay that well. Like it pays okay, one hundred and
Speaker 2: seventy four thousand dollars a year, which by the way,
Speaker 2: has been the same salary since two thousand and six,
Speaker 2: so with inflation, it's been about a thirty five percent
Speaker 2: pay cut. Okay. Why do the job if you're scared?
Speaker 2: Why do the job if you think you know death
Speaker 2: threats are going to come to you and you're going
Speaker 2: to vote a different way because of that. I mean,
Speaker 2: I hear people say they voted against impeachment because of
Speaker 2: the death threats. Like I had death threats too, Okay,
Speaker 2: but I also recognize that my job wasn't to be
Speaker 2: scared of death threats. It was to do the right thing.
Speaker 2: I don't know, it just goes beyond anything I can
Speaker 2: even understand.
Speaker 1: I guess what do you think it is? Why are
Speaker 1: they so afraid? You're right? Find out new job or
Speaker 1: grow a pair? And the question is are they just
Speaker 1: that addicted to power? Do they not know what else
Speaker 1: to do with their lives? What's wrong?
Speaker 2: With these people, I think you're onto it. I think
Speaker 2: it's Look, you imagine most of these people. I was
Speaker 2: young when I got into politics. I was thirty two
Speaker 2: thirty one when I was elected, and most of these
Speaker 2: people get elected at fifty sixty years old. Okay, So
Speaker 2: think about that. They spent their entire life probably with
Speaker 2: the desire to go to the House of Representatives, and
Speaker 2: then they made it, right, I mean, it's a big
Speaker 2: achievement to make it again. One out of seven hundred
Speaker 2: thousand people serve in that body. And so now all
Speaker 2: of a sudden, the idea of taking a stand. Maybe
Speaker 2: that feels heroic, but you've looked at everybody that has
Speaker 2: taken a stand, and they all have lost or gotten
Speaker 2: kicked out right, And so you make the decision and
Speaker 2: you justify it to yourself. You justified because you have
Speaker 2: sunken costs, Like why did we stay in Vietnam? Because
Speaker 2: we already lost ten thousand men. We can't leave now
Speaker 2: right now, we've so you've already justified the the moral
Speaker 2: decisions you've made, and you're like, Okay, I'm gonna stay
Speaker 2: because if I leave, somebody worse is going to replace me.
Speaker 2: The other thing is this, look, I think people fear
Speaker 2: more than they fear death. They fear being kicked out
Speaker 2: of their tribe and their social circle. And I got
Speaker 2: to tell you, as a guy that's been kind of
Speaker 2: kicked out of a tribe, there, it sucks. It hurts.
Speaker 2: You lose friends, friends that you think are real, friends
Speaker 2: that you recognize, aren't. You lose some family members over it.
Speaker 2: And I mean there were points at which probably death
Speaker 2: would have been easier than some of the things that
Speaker 2: I had to go through, and these people would have
Speaker 2: to go through that's a big fear too. But let
Speaker 2: me just say this. I went into Congress with this
Speaker 2: idea that someday, you know, if I had to go
Speaker 2: out in a blaze of glory standing for truth, I
Speaker 2: would do it. And I actually got an opportunity to
Speaker 2: do it. And I got to tell you, most people,
Speaker 2: I've learned, most people, very rarely, even in Congress, get
Speaker 2: an opportunity to kind of, you know, stand against the pressure.
Speaker 2: And those that get the opportunity, even very few are
Speaker 2: willing to do it. I have no regrets about it,
Speaker 2: and I'm happy to be out now. And the only
Speaker 2: regret I have is I wish I would have done
Speaker 2: it louder and twice as hard.
Speaker 1: Let me ask you about the Pentagon has a former
Speaker 1: Air Force pilot. You must know lots of people Adam
Speaker 1: in the military still, and lots of people of the
Speaker 1: Department of Defense. It sounds as if it is a
Speaker 1: real pardon my French shit show there right now. Tell
Speaker 1: us what you're hearing and how people feel about Pete
Speaker 1: hegsas leadership.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, look, and I know some of the
Speaker 2: people that are in the news stories right now, and
Speaker 2: it's I think it's for your average probably soldier that
Speaker 2: they probably don't really care too much because to them
Speaker 2: it's like, well, what's my mission today? Whatever. A lot
Speaker 2: of my friends are kind of higher ranking officers, and yeah,
Speaker 2: they're a little concerned about it, you know, they're bothered
Speaker 2: by it.
Speaker 1: What are they saying to you, Adam, I.
Speaker 2: Think just chaos, Like what's this chaos? You know? And
Speaker 2: by the way, I'm talking to some of my friends
Speaker 2: that are like hardcore Trumpers actually that are now like
Speaker 2: they haven't necessarily turned on Trump, So I don't want
Speaker 2: to get people that impression, but they've kind of turned
Speaker 2: on Heg Sath and been like this is just chaos
Speaker 2: for the sake of chaos, right. They also recognize, here's
Speaker 2: a big point, if any of my friends that are
Speaker 2: still in the military had done on a signal chat
Speaker 2: what heg Sath and all those people did, they'd be
Speaker 2: in Leavenworth right now, or at least facing the possibility
Speaker 2: of a jail sentence for that. And they recognize the
Speaker 2: disparity and the unfairness of that. The interesting dynamic about
Speaker 2: the military, though, is it's probably just as divided as
Speaker 2: regular society is. When I was in typically the officer
Speaker 2: corps was more Republican, about eighty percent of military officers
Speaker 2: voted Republican. The enlisted was about split fifty to fifty.
Speaker 2: You're actually seeing the opposite of that now, you're seeing
Speaker 2: the enlisted core tends to be more kind of Maga
Speaker 2: and Trump right now, and the officer court is about
Speaker 2: fifty to fifty, maybe even slightly leaning Democratic. What's the reason, Well,
Speaker 2: because broader what you've seen as Democrats are winning college
Speaker 2: educated and Republican aren't, and officers are you know, have
Speaker 2: to have college degrees. The concern I have is, look,
Speaker 2: the military, they've always told us our job is to
Speaker 2: defend the Constitution not to follow the unconstitutional orders. But
Speaker 2: what the early moves of the Trump administration in the
Speaker 2: Pentagon has been to put loyalists in place and make
Speaker 2: it very clear that you work for Donald Trump, not
Speaker 2: for the Constitution. And of course, one man's constitutional defense
Speaker 2: is another man's constitutional traitorism. Like what is defending the Constitution?
Speaker 2: It's different with every person. So I worry about kind
Speaker 2: of that moral morass that the Pentagon could find itself in.
Speaker 1: Given these two signal chat incidents, what do you think
Speaker 1: should happen to Pete heg Seth And do you think
Speaker 1: anything will?
Speaker 2: I mean, HEGs I should be out on us. But
Speaker 2: the reality is this guy. You know, I feel like
Speaker 2: I could be Secretary of Defense, but I also feel
Speaker 2: like I would have a steep learning curve. I outranked
Speaker 2: heg Seth in the military. I've been in more operations
Speaker 2: than him, and I served, you know, twelve years in Congress.
Speaker 2: I understand in government, this guy was a major, great
Speaker 2: cool and a weekend talk show host, and all of
Speaker 2: a sudden is now taking the largest, most legal organization
Speaker 2: in the world, totally in over his head. He knows it.
Speaker 2: That's what you can read it in the signal chats.
Speaker 2: He knows he's over his head because he's doing his
Speaker 2: damnedest to try to prove to everybody that he's totally capable.
Speaker 2: He's got like this imposture syndrome, except it would be
Speaker 2: called syndrome, except it's just he's actually an imposture. So
Speaker 2: I think he needs to be fired and removed. And
Speaker 2: I think eventually, if we fast forward to July, I
Speaker 2: think he's gone. I think he'll probably stick around for
Speaker 2: a little bit, so it doesn't appear that he was
Speaker 2: pushed out by the Libs or whatever. But I don't
Speaker 2: think he's going to last a whole lot longer. That's
Speaker 2: just my prediction.
Speaker 1: I want to ask you about your recent substack about
Speaker 1: the impacts tariffs and DOGE cuts are having on your
Speaker 1: home state of Illinois, Adams, specifically among farmers in the Midwest.
Speaker 1: I spoke with the farmer from Iowa not too long
Speaker 1: ago that Tom Harkin connected me with, and there was
Speaker 1: a lot of concern about the DOGE cuts, about USDA cuts,
Speaker 1: about programs for needy school children, about subsidies, about training programs,
Speaker 1: about all kinds of things that were impacting farmers seventy
Speaker 1: seven percent of whom voted for Donald Trump. What are
Speaker 1: you hearing from your home state.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean the same thing. Look, it's just the
Speaker 2: twelve second budget primer. Like, you could eliminate the Department
Speaker 2: of Defense and every federal agency and we would still
Speaker 2: be running a budget deficit right now, which is humbling
Speaker 2: to think about. One of the largest expenditures now is
Speaker 2: simply interest on the debt. We're spending more in interest
Speaker 2: on the debt than we are on all of defense,
Speaker 2: and we are on Medicare. So the problems with the
Speaker 2: debt and deficit have got to be structural reforms. Those
Speaker 2: structural reforms are not going into programs like USAID, which
Speaker 2: is less than half a percent of the budget and
Speaker 2: has exponential results in terms of helping out to avoid
Speaker 2: war and to basically have power outreach. And then on
Speaker 2: the local, on the farm community, you know things like
Speaker 2: you know, if you have a child with autism, for instance,
Speaker 2: and you know you want them to have a little
Speaker 2: extra help in their school district, that help comes from
Speaker 2: the federal government, even though it's done by the school district.
Speaker 2: You start taking programs like that away, and all of
Speaker 2: a sudden you're going to see RFK Junior's little thing
Speaker 2: about how you know autism is somehow makes you less
Speaker 2: of a person come true, because they're not going to
Speaker 2: have access to the resources they need. And for farmers,
Speaker 2: you know, during the first Trump administration, when there were tariffs,
Speaker 2: you know, moderately on China and a few other places,
Speaker 2: and then they still gave bailouts to the farmers. Every
Speaker 2: farmer I talked to said two things. Number One, the
Speaker 2: bailouts are not enough to take into account you know,
Speaker 2: how much they would have sold otherwise. And they don't
Speaker 2: want to bail out. Who wants a bailout When you're
Speaker 2: a farmer, you're obviously you want to work hard, you
Speaker 2: want to see the results of your production, and you
Speaker 2: want to know that what you're doing is feeding people.
Speaker 2: You don't need to check from the government to make
Speaker 2: sure that you just stay. I mean, you'll take it,
Speaker 2: but that's not what your goal in life is. And
Speaker 2: so I'm hearing the same thing, which is they're worried
Speaker 2: about what the cuts are. They're worried about, you know,
Speaker 2: obviously the tariffs China or somebody just said they canceled
Speaker 2: one hundred and fifty tons of beef for one hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty million tons of whatever it was, and that's
Speaker 2: going to have real devastating impacts. Does that mean they've
Speaker 2: turned against Trump? Not necessarily, because I think a lot
Speaker 2: of them. I think a lot of them still believe
Speaker 2: he's playing some six dimensional chess game, and it may
Speaker 2: take them to actually see a little more that he
Speaker 2: really doesn't know what he's doing for them to be like, Okay,
Speaker 2: it's time to move on.
Speaker 1: What happens if after a period of pain for farmers
Speaker 1: and small businesses, somehow this tariff thing turns around and
Speaker 1: works in his favor. I mean, that's what he's trying
Speaker 1: to convince voters of that there is going to be
Speaker 1: a period of pain until things get better. Is there
Speaker 1: any evidence that that could happen in your view?
Speaker 2: Well, let me just say, if magically it did happen,
Speaker 2: of course it would reflect well on him. But I
Speaker 2: can confidently say it ain't gonna happen. Why because look,
Speaker 2: here's here's a quick example. We've put tariffs on coffee imports.
Speaker 2: The United States is basically physically incapable of even growing coffee.
Speaker 2: We can grow a little bit in California, a little
Speaker 2: bit in Hawaii. It's like one percent of what we
Speaker 2: can what we drink in coffee. So we're tariffing an
Speaker 2: industry that we can't even compete against. That that's pointless
Speaker 2: all of a sudden. You know, this idea that Donald
Speaker 2: Trump wants to bring iPhone manufacturing here is insane because
Speaker 2: how many people are gonna want to do a job,
Speaker 2: you know, screwing little screws into an iPhone. We don't
Speaker 2: have the people to do it because we do a
Speaker 2: pretty low unemployment in this country, and now we're deporting
Speaker 2: every immigrant that could possibly work at that place. Think
Speaker 2: of it. Remember the whole eating the dogs and cats
Speaker 2: in Columbus, Ohio thing. Why were there so many Haitians
Speaker 2: in Columbus, Ohio because they were needed for work in
Speaker 2: manufacturing because they needed the employees there. So it's even
Speaker 2: if banning manufacturing makes the idea to come back here,
Speaker 2: they're not going to have the people to hire. Here's
Speaker 2: the amazing thing is after COVID, the supply chains were
Speaker 2: massively realigning in the United States. Favor I actually ran
Speaker 2: a bill through that said, like, we will incentivize certain
Speaker 2: industries to either onshore or near shore Canada, Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras,
Speaker 2: right among an allied nation that we know, for instance, penicillin,
Speaker 2: we have access to penicillin. We don't have to rely
Speaker 2: on China for that. But now we've tariffed Mexico, so
Speaker 2: we're now saying you can't even relocate to a near
Speaker 2: ally to defend the supply chain. So we've basically reversed
Speaker 2: any game that naturally happened after COVID. And so I'm
Speaker 2: very convinced that unless everything I know about economics is wrong,
Speaker 2: this will not play out in his favor. Sure, the
Speaker 2: government's going to raise a little more money in the meantime,
Speaker 2: and then we're going to lose a lot in tax revenue,
Speaker 2: which is something that he's not thinking.
Speaker 1: If you want to get smarter every morning with a
Speaker 1: breakdown of the news and fascinating takes on health and
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Speaker 1: Wake Up Call by going to Katiecuric dot com. It
Speaker 1: seems between tariffs and cozying up to Vladimir Putin, Donald
Speaker 1: Trump is doing everything in his power to alienate our
Speaker 1: allies and to reshuffle the world order. Can you figure
Speaker 1: out why and can you talk about the consequences of this.
Speaker 2: When you think like a narcissist. And I think narcissistic
Speaker 2: is kind of a kind word for Trump. It's megalomania
Speaker 2: or whatever. You cannot separate the view of the country
Speaker 2: and the view of yourself when you're president. So there
Speaker 2: is no interest in the country. It's all what is
Speaker 2: in Trump's interest. He looks at somebody like Vladimir Putin,
Speaker 2: like Kim Jong und who is living like he wants
Speaker 2: to be, and he admires that. I think that's part
Speaker 2: of it. I mean, there could be more to the
Speaker 2: Russia stuff, because I can't understand why he can't even
Speaker 2: once utter a bad word about Russia. But let me
Speaker 2: make the case for why this is so important. So,
Speaker 2: the United States of America has been for the last
Speaker 2: century basically the leader of the world. We also have
Speaker 2: the largest economy in the world. I remember twenty years
Speaker 2: ago saying that by the year twenty ten or twenty fifteen,
Speaker 2: China would surpass the US economy. Well, they haven't done that, okay,
Speaker 2: and they're not actually anywhere near doing that unless we
Speaker 2: continue to go on the path we're going on. And
Speaker 2: why is that because the trade deals that we've created,
Speaker 2: the economic thing of like high level manufacturing, they'll be
Speaker 2: done here. But things like socks. You know, yes, we
Speaker 2: used to make socks, but right now it doesn't make
Speaker 2: sense to so we'll import those. And we've got this
Speaker 2: thing that works really well with some challenges that we
Speaker 2: can actually fix, and we should go after unfair trade
Speaker 2: practices with China. But let's keep this in mind. After
Speaker 2: World War Two, the United States, after the destruction of
Speaker 2: the industrial capacity of all of Europe and basically Japan,
Speaker 2: the United States built back that industry here in the
Speaker 2: United States, which is why we had a massive explosion
Speaker 2: of industry in the forties and fifties. It was no
Speaker 2: reason besides it was destroyed everywhere else in the world,
Speaker 2: and we took advantage of that. That benefited the United
Speaker 2: States of America. We also basically wrote the international institutions.
Speaker 2: We wrote the rules of trade, we wrote the rules
Speaker 2: of war. We made the determination that we were going
Speaker 2: to protect all of the seas and the transition of
Speaker 2: the seas and the transportation on the seas, which makes
Speaker 2: the whole signal chat insane. When they're complaining about Europe
Speaker 2: by the way the UK and France was helping us
Speaker 2: in the Red Sea. But when you complain about Europe,
Speaker 2: but yet we told Europe, don't worry. The United States
Speaker 2: Navy will protect freedom of navigation of the seas. Why,
Speaker 2: kindness of our heart, not really, because it's to our benefit.
Speaker 2: So the post World War Two order, as great as
Speaker 2: it is, and it is great for humanity, was also
Speaker 2: written to advantage the United States. You throw that out
Speaker 2: and all of a sudden, we're no different than Russia
Speaker 2: or China, and we're going to pay a price for that.
Speaker 1: What is the endgame with Ukraine? It's hard to keep
Speaker 1: up with the negotiations trying to convince Vladimir Putin. I
Speaker 1: guess he just ordered a three day ceasefire. That was
Speaker 1: the last thing I saw. But the Trump administration trying
Speaker 1: to get Zelensky to accept that the Russians should have
Speaker 1: Crimea and other territories that they have gotten during the
Speaker 1: course of this war. Can you help us understand what
Speaker 1: the hell is going on and what the endgame is?
Speaker 2: Well, first off, let's say it. Where is the war
Speaker 2: right now? And here's the thing I think we have
Speaker 2: to always remember. Freight attacking country to win, the attacking
Speaker 2: country has to force the defending country to capitulate in
Speaker 2: the attacking country has to achieve its goals. For a
Speaker 2: defending country to win the war, all they have to
Speaker 2: do is keep defending themselves. They don't have to invade
Speaker 2: the Ukraine doesn't have to take over Moscow. It just
Speaker 2: has to keep defending. Ukraine is winning this war. The
Speaker 2: Russians are losing at the rate of one thousand men
Speaker 2: a day, so in a week and a half, the
Speaker 2: Russians lose as many as we lost in twenty years
Speaker 2: in Afghanistan. Every week and a half. They're out of
Speaker 2: offensive combat power. All their tanks are destroyed, they're pulling
Speaker 2: stuff out of storage from World War Two. They're attacking
Speaker 2: with donkeys, and they're making no gains on the ground.
Speaker 2: But Vladimir Putin wants to put out the impression that
Speaker 2: his victory is an inevitability here and that he doesn't
Speaker 2: want to negotiate because he's gonna win anyway. And unfortunately
Speaker 2: the Trump administration and a lot of people watching have
Speaker 2: bought into that theory, and they feel this panic that
Speaker 2: Ukraine has to surrender now or they're gonna lose everything.
Speaker 2: That's not the case. Now, It's also true that they're
Speaker 2: like two boxers in the tenth round that are kind
Speaker 2: of throwing punts at each other, but they're both exhausted.
Speaker 2: So it is time to negotiate an endto this war.
Speaker 2: But how do you negotiate it. Into the war, you
Speaker 2: basically respect Ukraine's territorial integrity and to allow Ukraine to
Speaker 2: have money to rebuild, because that's going to be the
Speaker 2: big key. You have to give Ukraine security guarantees because
Speaker 2: if you're a corporation and you want to invest in Ukraine,
Speaker 2: you're not going to invest a single dollar unless you
Speaker 2: know that war is not going to start again, and
Speaker 2: then you're happy to invest billions into the country. In
Speaker 2: terms of like you know, the East and Crimea. I
Speaker 2: think it's realistic to say that at no point soon
Speaker 2: are the Ukrainians going to, for instance, attack and take
Speaker 2: back Crimea. That is called a de facto recognition, So
Speaker 2: you're basically recognizing the fact that Russia is in Crimea,
Speaker 2: let's end this war. We're not going to force them out.
Speaker 1: And has been there since twenty fourteen.
Speaker 2: Correct. The difference is the Trump administration has talked about
Speaker 2: djure recognition, which means it is the force of US
Speaker 2: law that we recognize that CRIMEA now below belongs to Russia.
Speaker 2: That will be one of the first times in history
Speaker 2: we've ever done that. We never did that for any
Speaker 2: countries occupied by the Soviet Union. So Ukraine has rightly
Speaker 2: said this is unacceptable. And so I think we could
Speaker 2: see a peace settlement where the lines where they are
Speaker 2: actually become the lines. But to do that, Ukraine needs
Speaker 2: a guarantee of security and not djure recognition, de facto recognition.
Speaker 2: So hopefully that makes sense.
Speaker 1: And do you think that's going to happen. Do you
Speaker 1: think progress will be made?
Speaker 2: I think progress will only be made if two things happen.
Speaker 2: If Donald Trump actually demanded anything of Russia. I mean,
Speaker 2: what did he say. He demanded of Russia the other day,
Speaker 2: that they don't take over all of Ukraine. They've been
Speaker 2: trying for three years, trust me, they can't take over
Speaker 2: all of Ukraine. And if Europe this is key, if
Speaker 2: Europe makes a decision that despite the United States, they
Speaker 2: will stand with Ukraine, then I think you can see
Speaker 2: that because look, Vladimir Putin's a smart guy. Let's be clear,
Speaker 2: He's smart, he knows he can't win, he knows he's
Speaker 2: sending his youthful generation of men to die, and ultimately
Speaker 2: he just needs to know that he's hit a brick
Speaker 2: wall in his mind. Right now, he can still get
Speaker 2: more from the Trump administration, so he's going to keep
Speaker 2: trying to do it.
Speaker 1: Even Chuck Grassley spoke in opposition of this new relationship
Speaker 1: with Russia. He wrote on social media he'd seen enough
Speaker 1: killing of innocent Ukrainian women and children and said President
Speaker 1: Putin was playing America as a patsey.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Are we starting to see that sentiment grow among Republicans
Speaker 1: in your view? And will we start to see it?
Speaker 2: Well, let's be clear, we saw it shrink rapidly. Now
Speaker 2: the question is is it kind of gaining legs again
Speaker 2: a little bit? You know, you're starting to see people
Speaker 2: Tom Tillis Grassy, a few others speak out. The big
Speaker 2: question will be what do they do with their votes?
Speaker 2: Anybody can put out a generic tweet saying I generically
Speaker 2: support Ukraine and oppose Russia. Are you going to call
Speaker 2: it the president by name? Are you going to actually
Speaker 2: vote against maybe some of his priorities that maybe you
Speaker 2: agree with, but you want to use that vote is
Speaker 2: a way to compel further aid to Ukraine. That's the
Speaker 2: real question. Anybody can tweet anything supporting Ukraine. I'm glad
Speaker 2: they do. Look, I don't want to discourage that. But
Speaker 2: the question will be what do they do with the
Speaker 2: power they do have.
Speaker 1: Do you think the president we talked about this earlier
Speaker 1: could run again in twenty twenty eight? Obviously can't. Steve
Speaker 1: Bannon has talked about ways he thinks that they will
Speaker 1: be allowed to do that within the framework of the constitution.
Speaker 1: There's talk that he could run his vice president and
Speaker 1: then the president could then seed power to him. I mean,
Speaker 1: what do you think.
Speaker 2: Look, I'll be honest, this is not a scenario I
Speaker 2: worry about. Maybe I'm naive, but I do believe that
Speaker 2: the constitution is very clear he can't run again. He's
Speaker 2: it's very clear. And I think if you look at
Speaker 2: how the Supreme Court, even though I disagree with a
Speaker 2: lot of the recent Supreme Court decisions like the immunity
Speaker 2: and all that kind of stuff, the Supreme Court has
Speaker 2: kind of started to get a little pissed off. You know,
Speaker 2: seven to two, the first time I've ever known of this,
Speaker 2: even happening. The Supreme Court stopped the deportation flights, you know,
Speaker 2: by a vote of seven to two. Usually the Supreme
Speaker 2: Court's obviously takes a while to make a decision. Roberts
Speaker 2: or whatever put out a preemptive statement about the respect
Speaker 2: of the judiciary. What this says to me is that
Speaker 2: the Supreme Court is now starting to get a little
Speaker 2: jealous of their power. And so I think, look, the
Speaker 2: one area I guess I would be concerned about him
Speaker 2: running again, and keep in mind he'll be eighty two also,
Speaker 2: But the one area might get a little concerned is
Speaker 2: if somehow he convinces these hardcore red states to just
Speaker 2: simply allow him on the ballot, then what happens, right,
Speaker 2: That's what I don't know. So if you have let's
Speaker 2: just take a super red state like Indiana and say,
Speaker 2: let's say Trump is ineligible to run again, but Indiana
Speaker 2: just says, well, he's going to be the candidate and
Speaker 2: we put him on the ballot. Now you have a
Speaker 2: tension between states and the federal government. So that would
Speaker 2: be an area I'm concerned about. But in all honesty,
Speaker 2: that's not the one I'm losing sleep on. I worry
Speaker 2: about what damage is going to be done to that point.
Speaker 1: You have renewed faith, I guess in the Supreme Court.
Speaker 1: But it seems as if right now the administration is
Speaker 1: ignoring the judiciary branch of the government.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I don't want to say renewed faith is Supreme Court,
Speaker 2: but I guess, well.
Speaker 1: You were heartened.
Speaker 2: Let's say, yeah, there are a couple of things that
Speaker 2: have been a little heartening. Yes. Look, I think the
Speaker 2: real constitutional crisis will be the administration has already ignored
Speaker 2: a few court rulings. The real lynchmin will be when,
Speaker 2: and I think it will happen they ignore a Supreme
Speaker 2: Court ruling. And I don't know what happens with that.
Speaker 2: I mean, obviously the Supreme Court, I don't think is
Speaker 2: going to sit quietly and say, Okay, well we made
Speaker 2: our decision. If the president, you know, obviously they don't
Speaker 2: have a police force, so they can't send anything to
Speaker 2: enforce it, but they could be pretty loud. That's when
Speaker 2: you get into the question of where do people's loyalties lie.
Speaker 2: Where does the military's loyalties lie. Do the people are
Speaker 2: they willing to take to the streets and shut down
Speaker 2: commerce if we have to and you know, whatever it is,
Speaker 2: we need to be thinking through. As they escalate, we
Speaker 2: have to escalate and match. What are those different steps?
Speaker 2: You know? Obviously short of war, nobody's calling for violence,
Speaker 2: but like a protest every now and again, Eventually do
Speaker 2: we get to where we have to protest permanently? Eventually?
Speaker 2: Is it a general strike? Whatever those things are, I
Speaker 2: think we need to be thinking through. And again, the
Speaker 2: other message I'll say is this is not about please
Speaker 2: hear me, everybody. This is not right against left. This
Speaker 2: is do you support democracy or don't you? Because the
Speaker 2: one thing when we look at Venezuela, for instance, why
Speaker 2: is it that Maduro is still in power? It's very simple.
Speaker 2: The opposition fought among itself and continues to because they
Speaker 2: fight among themselves for power. This is a time when
Speaker 2: you have to find alliance with people whose views you
Speaker 2: may find abhorrent. But guess what we need to get
Speaker 2: back to where we can have the luxury to disagree
Speaker 2: on views again, because even that is a threat. This
Speaker 2: is not right against left. This is democracy against authoritarianism. Period.
Speaker 1: I have to ask you about AOC just while we're
Speaker 1: on that topic, because we're also seeing a lot of
Speaker 1: division within the Democratic Party. Nate Silver said he thought
Speaker 1: that she would be the twenty twenty eight presidential candidate.
Speaker 1: I'm curious if you could advise a Democratic Party about
Speaker 1: a candidate for twenty twenty eight, what would you say?
Speaker 2: It's a great question. First off, let me say this,
Speaker 2: I don't remember a single and you've been covering this
Speaker 2: for a while too. Do you ever remember at this
Speaker 2: point in a presidential term, anybody that was ever talked
Speaker 2: about to be the candidate in three and a half
Speaker 2: years never was ever right, or they certainly never became
Speaker 2: the nominee. There's some reason. It's usually the people that
Speaker 2: pop up late. Here's what I would say to the
Speaker 2: Democrats if I was giving advice when the middle when
Speaker 2: the middle Joe Biden, you know, he kind of won
Speaker 2: the middle. His problem was age. Let's think back to
Speaker 2: the last Democratic candidate who kind of did it as
Speaker 2: a centrist won the working class, Barack Obama. Yes, Bill
Speaker 2: Clinton win the working class. My opinion, it'll take some
Speaker 2: people off. I don't think you win the working class
Speaker 2: by going further left. The working class turned against the
Speaker 2: Democrats because of identity politics. I think it wasn't that
Speaker 2: they necessarily disagreed with some of the views they have
Speaker 2: on government spending or government programs, but they felt like
Speaker 2: they were being talked down to. And if you're, for instance,
Speaker 2: a middle class white male in the Midwest, and you've
Speaker 2: been told, you know, constantly that you're the problem and everything.
Speaker 2: I mean, we can have debates about where this country's
Speaker 2: gone off the cliff and we should and our difficulties,
Speaker 2: but everybody in this country has a right to equal
Speaker 2: access to government and to being American. So my advice
Speaker 2: to Democrats would be, what is it going to take
Speaker 2: to win the middle class and to win the middle
Speaker 2: That'll be your ticket, and I think you'll never lose
Speaker 2: again if you do that. If you go further left,
Speaker 2: may maybe you'll win. But the only way to win
Speaker 2: is to turn out more and more activists. In the process,
Speaker 2: you might actually alienate some of the folks in the.
Speaker 1: Middle I don't think this has happened before, Adam, and
Speaker 1: this is my last question, but every single member of
Speaker 1: our audience asked the same question, and that was about
Speaker 1: a potential presidential run. I'm sure this is not the
Speaker 1: first time you've been asked this, but is it something
Speaker 1: that you would consider for twenty twenty eight or beyond.
Speaker 1: And my husband's follow up was, if so, what party?
Speaker 2: Yeah, look, it's a great question, and honestly I don't know.
Speaker 2: Have I thought about it. I would be lying if
Speaker 2: I said I hadn't. Where I kind of look at
Speaker 2: it is like I don't want to run just because
Speaker 2: I want to be president or whatever it would be.
Speaker 2: Do I think I could bring something unique that other
Speaker 2: candidates are missing. I kind of think in a way
Speaker 2: I could, And honestly, what would I run as? I
Speaker 2: don't think i'd run as a Republican. I think that
Speaker 2: party is gone, and even though I was proud of
Speaker 2: being a Republican back when Republicans used to be what
Speaker 2: we remember them, that party's the thing in the past.
Speaker 2: Independent you can't win. My question would be can a
Speaker 2: centrist Democrat win? And so I think if I did run,
Speaker 2: that would be certainly an area I'd explore. But honestly,
Speaker 2: haven't taken any steps, haven't made any decisions. I really
Speaker 2: enjoy life right now. On the other side of everything, have.
Speaker 1: You made any steps to change your party affiliation?
Speaker 2: Not yet. I haven't voted Republican in four years, or
Speaker 2: I guess. The last two elections, I've voted straight Democratic,
Speaker 2: so you could look at that and that can say
Speaker 2: what it is. But at some point I think I may.
Speaker 2: But right now it takes them off a lot more
Speaker 2: for me to still call myself a Republican, so I'm
Speaker 2: going to keep doing it.
Speaker 1: Well, I know you call yourself a what do you say,
Speaker 1: A proud rhino.
Speaker 2: Yeah, proud rhino, and that's.
Speaker 1: That's what you're sticking with so far. But if you
Speaker 1: make a decision to change, I hope you'll let me
Speaker 1: talk to you, then.
Speaker 2: I will, absolutely, absolutely, maybe we'll talk soon.
Speaker 1: Okay, well that's quite a tease, Adam Kinzinger. Great to
Speaker 1: talk with you, and let's stay in touch. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much for your time.
Speaker 2: You butt anytime, Take care.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening everyone. If you have a question for me,
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