Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: I wanted to ask you, first of all about what
Speaker 2: we've been learning about. The editor of The Atlantic found
Speaker 2: himself in a chat with some of the most senior
Speaker 2: members of President Trump's administration national security staff, and by
Speaker 2: virtue of that was privy to plans for an attack
Speaker 2: in great detail.
Speaker 3: Your reaction to it. You sitt on the Senate Armed
Speaker 3: Services Committee.
Speaker 1: So let me just start with if Pete Hegseth had
Speaker 1: a shred of self respect and decency, he would resign.
Speaker 1: That's what leadership is about. And instead Pete Hegseth thinks
Speaker 1: it's all about I'll point at somebody else and minimize
Speaker 1: the problem and sweep it under the rug and deflect.
Speaker 1: You know, I want to be a leader of the
Speaker 1: finest armed forces in the world and step up and
Speaker 1: take some responsibility.
Speaker 3: Should he be fired, you talk about it. If you
Speaker 3: won't quit, then he.
Speaker 1: Should be fired because he has put our national security
Speaker 1: at risk. That's part one. Part two is you realize
Speaker 1: a bunch of this is potentially certainly breaking the law. So,
Speaker 1: for example, because of the Freedom of Information Act, there
Speaker 1: are laws that require that people in the administration all
Speaker 1: of them have to preserve the records of their texting
Speaker 1: back and forth. I know this from the days when
Speaker 1: I served in the administration and we were carefully cautioned
Speaker 1: about the importance of preserving records. Signal, as you know,
Speaker 1: disappears those records. And I will say on this when
Speaker 1: I read how casually they just formed this chat. Notice
Speaker 1: that's how you refer to it to discuss the national
Speaker 1: security issues and the bombing of another country. How many
Speaker 1: other times so are they using signal and what are
Speaker 1: they using it for? So this is a moment. We
Speaker 1: need some of those congressional investigations. We need a hearing
Speaker 1: in the Senate, we need a hearing in the House.
Speaker 1: I remember all of the hearings before when there was
Speaker 1: a question about Hillary Clinton's emails. I want to run
Speaker 1: the tape on how many Republicans talked about the importance
Speaker 1: of accountability and getting to the bottom of this. Where
Speaker 1: are they right now? I'm ready for those hearings, and
Speaker 1: the FBI needs to step up.
Speaker 2: This was a chat that was organized by Mike Waltz,
Speaker 2: the president national security advisor, and he addressed this in
Speaker 2: an interview on Fox News.
Speaker 3: Here's what he said. We made a mistake. We're moving forward.
Speaker 2: I noted that Biden large the response for the administration
Speaker 2: has been there wasn't classified information here, And as a
Speaker 2: result of that, the Atlantic release screenshots of a lot
Speaker 2: of these conversations. We learned that there was information about
Speaker 2: planes timing of this attack. You talk about the need
Speaker 2: for hearings. Are you optimistic that that's going to happen
Speaker 2: and that you're going to.
Speaker 3: Get to the bottom of what was in fact discussed
Speaker 3: on that chat.
Speaker 1: So I think this is a question fundamentally about where
Speaker 1: is power in this country. I get it elections, we
Speaker 1: pick a president. President picks a team, and that's where
Speaker 1: power resigns in terms of the execution day to day
Speaker 1: of various policies. But ultimately it's people across this country.
Speaker 1: And when people across this country said, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: the Secretary of Defense, I mean this is this is
Speaker 1: not some random guy off the streets who stumbled across
Speaker 1: some secret information and kind of didn't know how to
Speaker 1: handle it. This is the Secretary of Defense. And the
Speaker 1: Secretary of Defense went right along with exchanging this information
Speaker 1: in a place that is not secure. Again, I just
Speaker 1: got to stress over here, we want to look at
Speaker 1: any secret information, any confidential and information, any classified information,
Speaker 1: you got to go do onto a secure location to
Speaker 1: do it. You physically have to go, and you have
Speaker 1: to hand over your phone. By the way, somebody stands
Speaker 1: at the door and says, do you have any electronic
Speaker 1: devices on? And you've got to say no, I don't
Speaker 1: before you're allowed to go. Pencil and paper. Is how
Speaker 1: high tech they get because of the importance of protecting
Speaker 1: candid conversations that need to occur, and those candid conversations
Speaker 1: need to be shielded from the rest of the world.
Speaker 1: When the White House wants to say nothing to see here,
Speaker 1: just flip it the other direction and ask yourself if
Speaker 1: the Atlantic had called the White House and said, let
Speaker 1: me show you what we've got in advance of the bombing,
Speaker 1: you guys, okay, if we put it up on our website,
Speaker 1: how many heart attacks would there have been over at
Speaker 1: the White House saying no, no, no, no, no, you
Speaker 1: can't do that. Well, if it wouldn't have been okay
Speaker 1: for the Atlantic to publish all of that in advance,
Speaker 1: you gotta worry it's not published on a website. But
Speaker 1: I don't know who's listening on signal, the Chinese, the
Speaker 1: North Koreans, the Russians, some other bad actors out there.
Speaker 1: It is important that we follow through as a nation
Speaker 1: and say, look, you put our whole country at risk,
Speaker 1: our allies. I'm getting asked in the hallways by foreign reporters,
Speaker 1: can we actually trust the United States of America if
Speaker 1: we tell secrets and they're going to end up on
Speaker 1: some signal chat with the Secretary of Defense. So there
Speaker 1: needs to be an investigation, but there needs to be
Speaker 1: some accountability, and the accountability should start right now. Hegsas
Speaker 1: should resign, and if you won't do that, then Trump
Speaker 1: should fire them. He knows how to say you're fired.
Speaker 2: I want to ask you at the moment that we're in,
Speaker 2: this is your part of that moment. We're two months
Speaker 2: into this administration's tenure. How are you thinking about the
Speaker 2: role of the Democratic Party in this moment?
Speaker 3: And just it's gravity overall for the country itself.
Speaker 1: So let's set the table for this moment. Donald Trump
Speaker 1: ran for office saying over and over and over and
Speaker 1: over and over, I will lower costs on day one.
Speaker 1: Those are his words, not mine. I have a lower
Speaker 1: costs on day one. He said that to millions and
Speaker 1: millions of people, and right after he got elected, he
Speaker 1: was interviewed his very first interview, he said that's how
Speaker 1: I got elected, was saying I'm going to lower costs
Speaker 1: Onnday one. So here we are two months in. He
Speaker 1: has done nothing to lower costs. I mean no, all
Speaker 1: that's happening is we're watching places where costs are going up, up, up.
Speaker 1: But he and his co president Elon Musk, have been
Speaker 1: out there with a chainsaw moving through government, trying to
Speaker 1: fire the financial cops, for example, by trying to shut
Speaker 1: down the Consumer Financial protect Bureau, laying off tens of
Speaker 1: thousands of federal workers who kind of do the job
Speaker 1: of Social Security making sure people get their Social Security
Speaker 1: checks each month, ending contracts for medical research. So there's this,
Speaker 1: and playing red light green light with tariffs, right, yes
Speaker 1: there's a tariff, No, there's not a tariff, right, playing
Speaker 1: that game. So it's important to remember we're in a
Speaker 1: system right now that is deeply chaotic. I think of
Speaker 1: that like a sand storm. You know, the sand is
Speaker 1: blowing everywhere. I have. The job at the Democratic Party
Speaker 1: right now is to say there's a lot going on.
Speaker 1: We are in the fight. We are in the fight
Speaker 1: to save social security. We are in these fights, but
Speaker 1: to pull back and to look at the bigger picture.
Speaker 1: The media will do the day by day fights, but
Speaker 1: our job is to pull back and the bigger picture
Speaker 1: is that other promise that Donald Trump made when he
Speaker 1: was running for president. Remember to millions of people, he said,
Speaker 1: I will cut your costs. On day one. To a
Speaker 1: handful of what he called his richest held donors, he said,
Speaker 1: I'm going to give you tax breaks like you've never
Speaker 1: seen before. So right now, Trump, the Republicans, and the
Speaker 1: billionaires are working together to move forward on a tax
Speaker 1: giveaway of about four point seven billion dollars, mostly sucked
Speaker 1: up by billionaires billionaire corporations and then paid for on
Speaker 1: the backs of elderly people in nursing homes who will
Speaker 1: lose federal support. Your neighbor down the street who has
Speaker 1: a disability and needs a home health aid paid for
Speaker 1: by the federal government. Kids in public school who need help,
Speaker 1: and those public schools need help cutting scientific research and
Speaker 1: medical research. And that sets up what this fight is
Speaker 1: all about. Are we going to be a nation that
Speaker 1: hands over four point seven trillion dollars in giveaways to
Speaker 1: a handful of billionaires and makes everybody else pay for it.
Speaker 1: Are we going to be a nation that says no
Speaker 1: to tax cuts for those guys and says we're going
Speaker 1: to invest in America where everybody gets an opportunity.
Speaker 2: The leader of Democrats and the Senate, Chuck Schumer, has
Speaker 2: a book out, so he's been talking a lot in
Speaker 2: Something he's brought up over and over again is he
Speaker 2: doesn't think that we're at a constitutional crisis yet. I
Speaker 2: wonder if you agree with him in that regard, and
Speaker 2: if so, what is the threshold when we would be
Speaker 2: phasing one?
Speaker 1: So I have to say, before we got here in
Speaker 1: the last two months, I would have described a constitutional
Speaker 1: crisis is like a light switch. You're not in one,
Speaker 1: you're not in one, You're not in one of them,
Speaker 1: all of a sudden you are in one. I've come
Speaker 1: to think of that that differently. When you've got a
Speaker 1: president just right out of the chalks says, yeah, I
Speaker 1: know the Constitution says earthright citizenship, but constitutions constitution, I
Speaker 1: don't have to pay attention to that. When you've got
Speaker 1: a president that has a co president who poses with
Speaker 1: a chainsaw and has a job in government, doesn't have
Speaker 1: a job in government, fires people illegally, tries to shut
Speaker 1: down agencies, illegally, cuts off contracts illegally. In other words,
Speaker 1: shows a hostility to the law. That's deeply worrisome. So
Speaker 1: I worry that we move increasingly toward an administration that's
Speaker 1: not just saying I'm going to be a more robust president.
Speaker 1: And I get it. Presidents look at this differently, some
Speaker 1: a little stronger, some a little weaker. But a president
Speaker 1: that says there are no constraints on me, and that
Speaker 1: takes me back to constitutional law one oh one. Legislature
Speaker 1: writes those laws. That's our part. Congress, the administration, President
Speaker 1: and those who work in the administration administer those laws.
Speaker 1: And the courts have the responsibility if the administration steps
Speaker 1: out of line to say you violated the law. We
Speaker 1: keep all three parts in balance. And I'm watching Donald
Speaker 1: Trump and Elon Musk say no, there are not three
Speaker 1: equal branches of government. It's just one that smells a
Speaker 1: lot like a constitutional crisis.
Speaker 2: We've just been through a moment when Republicans wrote a
Speaker 2: continuing resolution and Chuck Schumer said the Democrats had supported
Speaker 2: he did. You did not, I should say, you did
Speaker 2: a town hall in Lowell, Massachusetts. WBR was there and
Speaker 2: recorded it, and I got tape of what you said.
Speaker 2: I think Chuck Schumer is wrong. You didn't linger on that,
Speaker 2: and I wonder if you might hear, just for a moment,
Speaker 2: was he wrong about the political calculation? Spell out for
Speaker 2: me what you disagreed about that he did.
Speaker 3: In particular, I.
Speaker 1: Think there's a moment when his stand and fight, and
Speaker 1: for me, that moment came with a continuing resolution.
Speaker 3: It was a squaded opportunity to do so.
Speaker 1: It's more than that. Understand, Let's go back to what
Speaker 1: we're talking. What is the big fight right now? The
Speaker 1: big fight is going to be whether or not the
Speaker 1: billionaires and Donald Trump and Elon Musk are just going
Speaker 1: to take over our country and run it to suit themselves,
Speaker 1: make everybody else pay for it. That's what the budget
Speaker 1: is all about. We do a lot of other things
Speaker 1: in Washington, but you want to know our values. Take
Speaker 1: a look at the budget, and so the question becomes,
Speaker 1: in this fight, we got to stop and draw the
Speaker 1: line and say it's time. It's time for us to
Speaker 1: fight back. It's time to call on people of the
Speaker 1: United States, because that whole constitutional structure that I was
Speaker 1: talking about, the three parts of government, all rest ultimately
Speaker 1: on the people, and it is time to have that fight.
Speaker 2: Did it cause you to reevaluate your faith and confidence
Speaker 2: in Senator Schumer is a leader of Democrats in the Senate.
Speaker 1: I want to be clear, we are heading into a
Speaker 1: fight where we need every single Democrat pointed the same way.
Speaker 1: We may still be bumping around on exactly what the
Speaker 1: timing is going to be on that fight, exactly where
Speaker 1: the trigger point is going to be, but there is
Speaker 1: no doubt in the United States Senate, the forty seven
Speaker 1: of us are locked arms and moving in the same direction.
Speaker 1: And the same is true over in the House. This
Speaker 1: fight is on top of us. We cannot avoid this
Speaker 1: fight because Donald Trump and Elon Musk, truly they want
Speaker 1: to take this country over for just a handful of people,
Speaker 1: and they want even more wealth and more power to
Speaker 1: go to them. Well, everybody else has to pay for it.
Speaker 1: That is the fight.
Speaker 2: Last question on this subject, sure, what is your role
Speaker 2: as you see it in that fight? You write a
Speaker 2: lot of letters to administration officials, you speak out quite
Speaker 2: a bit, You are somebod I think identifiable with this
Speaker 2: oversight fight and struggle with the administration. How do you
Speaker 2: see your role in the Democratic Party broadly today?
Speaker 1: But I look at what are the tools in my toolbox.
Speaker 1: I'll use every one of them that I possibly can.
Speaker 1: Oversight is a big part. This is part of your
Speaker 1: job when you're a senator, and that is to look
Speaker 1: at the agencies, to ask questions of these nominees, to
Speaker 1: get them on the record, to press them, to ask
Speaker 1: for investigations. This is why we need inspectors General. This
Speaker 1: is why we need an active GAO. This is why
Speaker 1: we need an FBI that is still functional. It's partly
Speaker 1: just to say we already have laws, and for the
Speaker 1: damn laws, make sure that people are doing that. That's
Speaker 1: part of my job. Part of my job is to
Speaker 1: be in the fight to give it everything I've got because,
Speaker 1: as I said, ultimately it's going to be about people
Speaker 1: across this country saying, look, I don't want in America
Speaker 1: where it's all about a handful of billionaires. I want
Speaker 1: in America where we actually do invest in medical research.
Speaker 1: I want in America where actually every kid has an
Speaker 1: opportunity to go to public school, even kids who have
Speaker 1: special need to hear me talking as a special needs teacher.
Speaker 1: I want in America where we're making investments in our
Speaker 1: best resource, and that is our people.
Speaker 2: Talking to a former law professor. So Article two, Section two,
Speaker 2: Power of advice and consent. By virtue of the committees
Speaker 2: that you sit on Armed Services, Finance, Banking, you have
Speaker 2: had the ability to question a lot of these higher
Speaker 2: profile nominees. Coming up is the presence picked ahead the
Speaker 2: securious Exchange Commissions. And you've written a memo thirty four
Speaker 2: pages in length. It starts with the congressions.
Speaker 1: That average for me.
Speaker 2: You say, he has extensive experience in financial services and
Speaker 2: capital markets.
Speaker 3: But I have concerns.
Speaker 2: About your record if you tick through what he's done
Speaker 2: as an SEC staffer and commissioner, and the work that
Speaker 2: he's done since in the private sector as a consultant.
Speaker 2: He did work on behalf of FTX, the fraudulent and
Speaker 2: failed crypto conglomerate that Sam Bankman freed started. You point
Speaker 2: out things he said about crypto and climate regulations. Given
Speaker 2: all of that, is there anything that he could say
Speaker 2: to earn your vote and committee?
Speaker 1: So let me back up just a little bit. Think
Speaker 1: about the job that he's being interned top cop on
Speaker 1: Wall Street, top cop on Wall Street, and cop in
Speaker 1: two meanings of that word. One is you've got to
Speaker 1: catch the fraudsters. You've got to make sure everybody's dotting
Speaker 1: their eyes and crossing their teas, because there's a lot
Speaker 1: of value in having that stock market be an honest
Speaker 1: and level playing field. The other way in which top cop,
Speaker 1: it's to watch for risk building up in the system.
Speaker 1: It's to make sure that the regulations that are in
Speaker 1: place are appropriately calibrated to deal with those risks and
Speaker 1: beat those risks out of the system. Paul Atkins actually
Speaker 1: has a track record on exactly that issue because he
Speaker 1: served as a commissioner in the SEC from two thousand
Speaker 1: and one to two thousand and eight.
Speaker 3: You remember what you actual crisis.
Speaker 1: Yes, so here we are in lead up to the
Speaker 1: financial crisis, and over and over again, what does Paul
Speaker 1: Atkins vote for loosen the regulations?
Speaker 2: What does his nomination say to you about the regulatory
Speaker 2: framework this administration?
Speaker 1: Once, oh, I think this is entirely in keeping with
Speaker 1: what Donald Trump and Elon Musk want to see us do,
Speaker 1: and that is loosen regulations. Loosen regulations. Loosen regulations, that
Speaker 1: is what Paul Atkins did. They also said repeatedly that
Speaker 1: no regulations just get in the way. Everybody needs to
Speaker 1: do whatever they want. Those big Wall Street giants. We
Speaker 1: saw the crash in two thousand and eight, and here's
Speaker 1: what happens next. After the crash, he has the chance
Speaker 1: to have a little twenty twenty hindsight. He has twenty
Speaker 1: zero hindsight. He looks back and says, no problem with
Speaker 1: having let those giant Wall Street banks run wild, and
Speaker 1: the fact that the American taxpayer had to bail them
Speaker 1: out not a problem. That's my concern. If someone has
Speaker 1: demonstrated such poor judgment, you've got to be really worried
Speaker 1: about putting them in a job where the failure to
Speaker 1: have good judgment could be like it was back then. Remember,
Speaker 1: ten million families lost their homes, millions more people lost
Speaker 1: their jobs. We watched Wall Street do a real tank then.
Speaker 1: And here's the thing about Paul Atkins. We have both
Speaker 1: his demonstrated experience, but also look at his experience overall.
Speaker 1: So his time in government is a real problem. But
Speaker 1: now he's someone who has built a very lucrative business
Speaker 1: with Potomac Partners. He charges evidently upwards of twelve hundred
Speaker 1: dollars an hour to give advice, and he says, well,
Speaker 1: I'm going to divest this interest, but he doesn't want
Speaker 1: to tell us who he's divesting too, who's buying, and
Speaker 1: for what purposes? And what are the long term plans?
Speaker 1: Because here's the deal. SEC chairmanship doesn't last forever, right,
Speaker 1: two years, four years, maybe longer? My concern is, And
Speaker 1: so what happens on the other end. Does he just
Speaker 1: come right back out and instead of charging twelve hundred
Speaker 1: dollars now it's now twenty four hundred dollars an hour?
Speaker 1: But it's who do you work for? And why that
Speaker 1: matters is it has an effect on the time you
Speaker 1: sit as chairman of the SEC. So there he is
Speaker 1: making decisions, and I look at someone like Paul Atkins.
Speaker 1: How much time has he spent with families that are
Speaker 1: working three jobs to try to make it to the
Speaker 1: end of the month. How much time has he spent
Speaker 1: with any of those ten million people who lost their
Speaker 1: homes in the last crash? And how much time has
Speaker 1: he spent with this handful of billionaires who really, at
Speaker 1: least in the short run love these deregulated markets and
Speaker 1: taxpayer bailouts, and how much when he makes a decision
Speaker 1: is he thinking about the guy working three jobs? And
Speaker 1: how much is he thinking about his future clients whom
Speaker 1: he could please? Wileys of the SEC. So those are
Speaker 1: the problems for me.
Speaker 2: Something about which I know you're passionate is the independence
Speaker 2: of these regulatory Oh yes, you look at the SEC today.
Speaker 2: There are two Republicans on that commission, one Democrat whose
Speaker 2: term will be up soon. There's been no indication the
Speaker 2: present's going to put forward another Democratic nominee. I look
Speaker 2: at the FTC, the Federal Trade Commission, and the two
Speaker 2: Democratic members were removed by this administration.
Speaker 3: They're fighting to get back in those positions.
Speaker 2: What is the practical implication of that, not having five
Speaker 2: members in place, not having the kind of imagine ideological
Speaker 2: political diversity you would have under normal circumstances.
Speaker 1: Right. I'm glad you asked that, because it's a reminder
Speaker 1: that when those agencies were designed FTC, of course the oldest,
Speaker 1: the SEC, during the Great Depression, they were made bipartisan
Speaker 1: from the beginning, in an understanding that, yeah, it's going
Speaker 1: to move a little there's going to be a little shift,
Speaker 1: but we need buy in across the political spectrum, and
Speaker 1: we need the stability all the way through the entire system.
Speaker 1: I think of it this way, even for companies that
Speaker 1: are saying, let's de regulate, you know, turn us loose,
Speaker 1: let us do whatever we want. At the end of
Speaker 1: the day, yeah, let me feel good. In the short term,
Speaker 1: you may be able to figure out how to cut
Speaker 1: a corner here and make a little more money. But understand,
Speaker 1: the reason our stock market is so valuable is in
Speaker 1: part because it has level, transparent rules that are strictly enforced.
Speaker 1: And you start to weaken that and in the short
Speaker 1: run you may make a profit and that guy over there,
Speaker 1: but how many other people say, you know what, I
Speaker 1: don't think that's where I want to invest my money.
Speaker 1: I think I'm just going to slow down on how
Speaker 1: much of my wealth, my energy, my time, my talent
Speaker 1: I put in there. We have built a legal structure
Speaker 1: that in many ways is the envy of the world.
Speaker 1: There's a reason investment comes into the United States, and
Speaker 1: it's because you count on those structures independent of where
Speaker 1: they've got a Democrat or a Republican in the White House,
Speaker 1: the structures work when Donald Trump and Elon Musk come
Speaker 1: in and don't just say, you know, let's give a
Speaker 1: little different emphasis. But they want a chainsaw. They want
Speaker 1: to just get rid of everyone who doesn't follow their
Speaker 1: deregulatory agenda. They're boost the billionaire agenda. That's going to
Speaker 1: cost everybody in this country.
Speaker 2: Want to stick with the FTC and what happened there,
Speaker 2: because we've heard from the FED chairman with whom you've
Speaker 2: had your sheriff disagreements, I should say over policy and
Speaker 2: I ticket hearings.
Speaker 1: He's not over his independence, not over.
Speaker 3: His independence, and that's where I want to go.
Speaker 2: Should he be worried as he watches what happened at
Speaker 2: the FTC about his and his colleagues ability to keep
Speaker 2: their positions in the Federal Reserve?
Speaker 1: I want to say, no, he shouldn't be worried because
Speaker 1: I stand staunchly behind the independence of the FED, But
Speaker 1: damn I stand staunchly behind the independence of the FTC
Speaker 1: and behind the independence of the SEC within their statutory neighborhoods.
Speaker 1: But that's the question. If Donald Trump can just start
Speaker 1: getting rid of everyone who disagrees with him anywhere in government,
Speaker 1: for me, it started actually with the inspectors General. If
Speaker 1: he can just fire those inspectors General, even though the
Speaker 1: statutes say that they have job protection and can only
Speaker 1: be fired for cause, If he can just mow through
Speaker 1: every civil servant, if he can just mow through the
Speaker 1: Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, it's a form of lawlessness and
Speaker 1: all the power belongs to the king that it suggests
Speaker 1: nobody is safe, not even the chairman of the Federal Reserve.
Speaker 2: I want to guess that the person you'd most like
Speaker 2: to have in a seat in front of you in
Speaker 2: a hearing room is Elon Musk, of course, not a
Speaker 2: cabinet appointee.
Speaker 1: In fact, what is he? Can you just tell me?
Speaker 1: I recurt here it documents, and I hear that he's nothing.
Speaker 1: He's just the guy who stands her in the White House.
Speaker 2: But it gets to this issue of who does hold
Speaker 2: him to account? And in your capacity as senior center
Speaker 2: from Massachusetts, ranking member of the banking how do you
Speaker 2: get answers from somebody who again has no official position,
Speaker 2: traditional official position, but is doing so much to reshape
Speaker 2: the bureaucratic landscape, the regulatory landscape, in fact, the whole government.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so let me do two parts here. The first
Speaker 1: one is, I want to remind you after Donald Trump
Speaker 1: was elected, one of the very first letters I wrote
Speaker 1: was to Elon Musk and I said, I've read the declaration.
Speaker 1: You want to cut two trillion dollars from the budget,
Speaker 1: which he then trimmed down to a trillion, which he
Speaker 1: then trimmed down to half trillion. I said, don't give up,
Speaker 1: don't give up. You can cut two trillion dollars in
Speaker 1: waste and fat out of the And here's a list
Speaker 1: of thirty things that I've been working on for a
Speaker 1: long time here in Congress that I've seen kind of
Speaker 1: an insider's view on some of this, places where we
Speaker 1: could make cuts that would make our government actually more efficient,
Speaker 1: that would make our government work better. You want to
Speaker 1: go to work, I'm ready. I'm ready. And you don't
Speaker 1: have to promise to do all thirty just pick any
Speaker 1: of them. This is a menu, Just take whatever you
Speaker 1: like on this no answer. And instead he goes out
Speaker 1: and just starts firing people. And now this moves into
Speaker 1: the second part of the answer. He does things that
Speaker 1: are illegal, and there's just not much doubt about this.
Speaker 1: He fires people who under law have certain job protections,
Speaker 1: can only be fired in certain ways. He goes out
Speaker 1: there and cancels contracts government contracts that can only be
Speaker 1: canceled by a federal contracting official. I mean, look at
Speaker 1: the laws, just boring old laws about this stuff. So
Speaker 1: what we have is a lawlessness that has been set
Speaker 1: through our entire government. And this is a threat to democracy.
Speaker 1: It is also a threat to our economy. You can't
Speaker 1: build a strong and stable economy in the middle of this.
Speaker 1: It is also a threat, damn it, to good government.
Speaker 1: I go back to my list. There are things I
Speaker 1: really wanted to cut toa something else I want to do.
Speaker 1: I think we ought to have simpler regulations. I'm not
Speaker 1: a no regulations gal, but I am definitely there are
Speaker 1: a lot of places we should simplify our regulations, make
Speaker 1: them clearer, easier to understand. There are things we could
Speaker 1: do to run this government better. And in that sense,
Speaker 1: I want to cheer when someone says I want to
Speaker 1: be a reformer, but you got to be a reformer
Speaker 1: within the law that is possible. Right now, Republicans are
Speaker 1: inc of the House, the Senate, of the White House.
Speaker 3: You guys want to.
Speaker 1: Do reform pass some damn laws, but do not set
Speaker 1: Elon Musk to take a chainsaw of cancer research in
Speaker 1: America and put old people out of the nursing homes
Speaker 1: that they're in. That is not how America builds a future,
Speaker 1: and frankly, that is not the kind of people we
Speaker 1: want to be.
Speaker 2: Last question here, we've talked about the three branches of government.
Speaker 2: Let me ask you about the judicial one in particular,
Speaker 2: drawing from your experience again as a professor of law,
Speaker 2: are you confident that the courts will be able to
Speaker 2: keep up with all of the challenges that we've seen here?
Speaker 2: There has been this flurry, the sandstorm, as you described it.
Speaker 2: Can the courts keep up?
Speaker 1: It's tough. Look, we're at over one hundred lawsuits. I
Speaker 1: no longer can keep the number in my head because
Speaker 1: it keeps shifting up. But the judges by and large
Speaker 1: have stepped up. Courts are designed to go slowly right,
Speaker 1: and Elon Musk is fast. Right. You can break laws
Speaker 1: a lot faster than you can actually hold people accountable
Speaker 1: for that. But at the end of the day, the
Speaker 1: three parts of government. Congress writes those laws, the administration
Speaker 1: administers those laws. We count on the courts to hold
Speaker 1: the first two to their roles. I think the judges
Speaker 1: are stepping up, so I say this half out of
Speaker 1: hope but half out of conviction. I still believe in
Speaker 1: the Constitution of the United States. I think most judges do,
Speaker 1: and I think they're going to hold