Speaker 1: Okay, Happy Monday. Welcome to another episode of the Chuck Podcast.
Speaker 1: I have a fascinating guest today that I think you're
Speaker 1: going to be very interested in hearing from. It's Democratic
Speaker 1: Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett from Dallas. My guess is, if you
Speaker 1: haven't heard an interview of her then, and you've only
Speaker 1: seen clips, you may have drawn a conclusion about her
Speaker 1: based on snippets, based on social media, based on a TikTok,
Speaker 1: based on this. Well, here's what you're going to get today.
Speaker 1: You're going to get forty plus minutes getting to know
Speaker 1: the congresswoman. This isn't going to be short snippets and
Speaker 1: sound bites and all of that. And I just have
Speaker 1: a feeling that if you have not had spent a
Speaker 1: long time listening to her and just have a sort
Speaker 1: of quick take hot take about her, after you listen
Speaker 1: to this interview, you will follow those hot takes where
Speaker 1: they belong, which is probably somewhere in the garbage. Anyway,
Speaker 1: The point is, I think you'll learn a lot and
Speaker 1: listen to the conversation through the premise, and I'm going
Speaker 1: to have a couple of conversations over the next week
Speaker 1: about this because she's making one recommendation of how Democrats
Speaker 1: should deal with this current moment. I'm gonna row conna on.
Speaker 1: He's going to make another He's going to have another take.
Speaker 1: You've heard other Democrats make their take, and that's there.
Speaker 1: Really is an interesting debate that is happening. You're going
Speaker 1: to see it, I think over the next couple of years,
Speaker 1: frankly through in the run up to the eventual actual
Speaker 1: start of the presidential primary campaign on the Democratic side.
Speaker 1: But of just what tactic is better. Do you need
Speaker 1: to be Trump light, do you need to be a
Speaker 1: bit hot if you will on social media? Or is
Speaker 1: this a time to actually zag just as Trump is zigging.
Speaker 1: But before I get to that, I think we should
Speaker 1: talk about the week ahead that we're going to have
Speaker 1: in politics and where the news is going to be made.
Speaker 1: President Trump is going overseas. It's his first official overseas trip.
Speaker 1: Even though he actually took one to the Pope's funeral,
Speaker 1: that was an unplanned This was the plan, and just
Speaker 1: like he did in his first term, he decided to
Speaker 1: make Saudi Arabia his first stop and the relationship that
Speaker 1: he has developed with Saudi Arabia and UAE and Qatar
Speaker 1: is quite close, and he's, let's just be honest, he's
Speaker 1: blurring the lines between public and private in a way
Speaker 1: that that that it's it's not even subtle, right, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's so it's so blatant. But I think at
Speaker 1: the heart of what you're going to see this week,
Speaker 1: and the shiny metal object of the week is going
Speaker 1: to be the news that was broken over the weekend.
Speaker 1: And we had already gotten hints of this, and that
Speaker 1: is the the fact that the President of the United
Speaker 1: States is about to accept the largest gift that any
Speaker 1: entity has ever given the United States. And what if
Speaker 1: I told you that this gift was coming from the
Speaker 1: chief patron of the terrorist organization known as Hamas. You
Speaker 1: remember Hamas. This is the group behind the killing and
Speaker 1: kidnapping of Israelis and Americans on October seventh. This is
Speaker 1: a terrorist organization that has the blood of Americans on
Speaker 1: their hands, the blood of Israelis on their hands, the
Speaker 1: blood of other Palestinians on their hands. This is not
Speaker 1: a good group of people, Okay. Hamas is a bad
Speaker 1: organization and their chief protector is the government of Qatar.
Speaker 1: And what is the government of Kantar about to do.
Speaker 1: It's about to gift Donald Trump a plane, a seven
Speaker 1: forty seven. And Donald Trump, it's considered it's so ornate
Speaker 1: that it's called a palace in the sky. So Donald trum,
Speaker 1: what's to accept this gift? He toured He sort of
Speaker 1: kicked the tires on this plane down in Palm Beach
Speaker 1: when it was parked there. It was just sort of
Speaker 1: showing it off to him, and he got to tour it. Look,
Speaker 1: there is an actual clause in the Constitution, the Emoluments Clause,
Speaker 1: that makes foreign gifts like this personally taking it illegal. Now, technically,
Speaker 1: the Trump government is saying that this is a gift
Speaker 1: to the US Air Force and that it'll eventually end
Speaker 1: up as a gift to the Trump Presidential Library. And
Speaker 1: so since it is not being given to an individual
Speaker 1: and it is not connected to any specific act, that
Speaker 1: somehow this is not bribery and that somehow this is constitutional. Okay,
Speaker 1: So meanwhile, I'm about to sell you some land in
Speaker 1: the Everglade Swamp. If you'd like to buy that great land,
Speaker 1: trust me, you should be able to develop on it
Speaker 1: quite easily. Look, this is as corrupt of a bargain
Speaker 1: as we've seen any president ever make. And I know
Speaker 1: that it's it's hard to keep up with the amount
Speaker 1: of blatant corruption that has taken place in just the
Speaker 1: first one hundred and twenty so days. Right, this trip
Speaker 1: was preceded by the way this trip to the Middle
Speaker 1: East that the president is on was preceded by his
Speaker 1: sons going there doing some various business deals, including in
Speaker 1: the crypto space, in some ways laying the groundwork for
Speaker 1: the quote official presidential visit. And oh, by the way,
Speaker 1: the White House is actually signaling that, hey, this isn't
Speaker 1: a big national security visit, this isn't about Iran or
Speaker 1: the future of gods or anything like that, that this
Speaker 1: really is more of a business trip. Now they're claiming
Speaker 1: it's the business of you know, Gulf States doing business
Speaker 1: with the United States and with American businesses. And there's
Speaker 1: going to be a big event on the thirteenth, on
Speaker 1: Tuesday in Saudi Arabia that is a public private event
Speaker 1: in order to essentially connect American businesses with potentially with
Speaker 1: Saudi money. And look, Saudi Arabia is an ally, right,
Speaker 1: they're an ally. We can have the conversation about whether
Speaker 1: Saudi Arabia, Ua, and Qatar. Whether these countries are small,
Speaker 1: d democratic, here's a clue they're not. But certainly they
Speaker 1: have things we need, including access to energy. Right, this
Speaker 1: has always been a very transactional relationship that we've had
Speaker 1: with them. But what Donald Trump is doing it by
Speaker 1: personalizing this relationship. And there's already so many uncomfortable aspects
Speaker 1: to this. His son in law has private equity money
Speaker 1: that came from the Middle East in and around the
Speaker 1: deals he was doing for the so called Abraham Accords.
Speaker 1: Steve Manushan when he was Treasury Secretary, as he was leaving,
Speaker 1: was taking trips on official government business getting ready for
Speaker 1: his own private equity money that he now manages there
Speaker 1: and has a significant investment from these Middle Eastern players
Speaker 1: in the Gulf States. And now you've got the President
Speaker 1: the United States just blatantly accepting this plane. Now look
Speaker 1: the plane itself. There is no possibility this is legal.
Speaker 1: But the irity is that the White House is claiming
Speaker 1: they went to the Attorney General, and they went to
Speaker 1: the White House Council and they somehow think on a
Speaker 1: technicality that they're getting around any constitutional problems with accepting
Speaker 1: this gift. Whether it's legal or not, it's inappropriate. This
Speaker 1: is a terrible look the president of the United States.
Speaker 1: The United States of America can't afford to buy its
Speaker 1: own presidential plane, so they need a gift of a
Speaker 1: monarch slash dictator in the Middle East. They have to
Speaker 1: get a plane from them. By the way, it is
Speaker 1: a Boeing plane. At least it's American made. I will
Speaker 1: give the president that. It would have been even more
Speaker 1: awkward if if he was being gifted an air bus
Speaker 1: in order to make it the presidential plane. But if
Speaker 1: they remotely want to make this legal, if he's going
Speaker 1: to make it air Force one, and apparently that's what
Speaker 1: they're going to do. They're going to accept this plane.
Speaker 1: It's going to get essentially retrofitted with all the things
Speaker 1: a president needs in the air and it's going to
Speaker 1: be Air Force one for the remainder of Trump's term.
Speaker 1: Trump is frustrated because there was supposed to be a
Speaker 1: new Air Force one. There hasn't been a new Air
Speaker 1: Force one in thirty years, and there was supposed to
Speaker 1: be a new Air Force one. There's been delays and
Speaker 1: it looks like Boeing because they can't deliver anything on time.
Speaker 1: These days, Boeing is not going to be able to
Speaker 1: deliver this until twenty twenty nine, when Donald Trump will
Speaker 1: no longer be president. But he he needs his plane now.
Speaker 1: I guess he stomped his feet and pounded the table.
Speaker 1: He wants his plane. Give him his PS five, give
Speaker 1: him his video games. Now, give him his plane right now.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I've always said with Donald Trump, if you really
Speaker 1: want to understand his psyche, if you have a teenage boy,
Speaker 1: or had a teenage boy, then you know what it's
Speaker 1: like to manage Donald Trump. They want stuff instantaneously, they
Speaker 1: can't handle no for an answer, and they're always looking
Speaker 1: for a shortcut to get what they want. This has
Speaker 1: been Donald Trump's life for what is he now? It's
Speaker 1: going to be seventy nine in June, so the plane
Speaker 1: is going to be the latest shiny metal object. The
Speaker 1: irony to this is I think Donald Trump believes he's
Speaker 1: untouchable now right his own base is not going to
Speaker 1: care about this. The elected Republicans who all were outraged
Speaker 1: about Hunter Biden making money off of Joe Biden in
Speaker 1: his last name, have been incredibly silent as Eric and
Speaker 1: Donald Trump Junior have done this crypto business using their
Speaker 1: father's name to do this. Never mind half the deals
Speaker 1: they've been conducting in the Middle East, all all with
Speaker 1: overtures having to do with what the federal government, with
Speaker 1: the US government form policy, is going to do. It's
Speaker 1: totally been mixed in here. If Hunter Biden were doing
Speaker 1: ten percent of this, you might have had Democrats agreeing
Speaker 1: to impeachment proceedings against Joe Biden if this is how
Speaker 1: Hunter Biden and the business of the Bidens were behaving.
Speaker 1: But that's what the business of the Trump's are behaving.
Speaker 1: And I'll be very curious if any Republicans are comfortable
Speaker 1: putting sticking their head up and saying this is wrong.
Speaker 1: We saw what the crypto when he did his crypto fundraiser,
Speaker 1: where basically they announced, if you buy his fake token,
Speaker 1: the Trump coin, the top coin holders are going to
Speaker 1: get access to the president, going to get a private fundraiser,
Speaker 1: and then if you are really a top buyer of
Speaker 1: his coin, you get even further access to VIP two
Speaker 1: or possibly of the White House, possibly of something else.
Speaker 1: And Cynthia Lummus and a few others they thought, oh,
Speaker 1: that might be a bridge too far. And actual crypto
Speaker 1: advocates have quiet I actually been whispering that Donald Trump's
Speaker 1: greed with these Millennia coins and these Trump coins, his
Speaker 1: personal greed in trying to make and scam crypto money
Speaker 1: here is probably making it a lot harder to legitimize
Speaker 1: the idea of the crypto industry. And you saw some
Speaker 1: Democrats who are trying to be pro crypto here. Look,
Speaker 1: I'm a huge skeptic of this. It is, you know,
Speaker 1: ideal in baseball cards. There's no difference to me between
Speaker 1: crypto and baseball cards. I believe in the blockchain. The
Speaker 1: blockchain is an incredible technology, but we're not turning it
Speaker 1: into a currency, and we're not replacing the US dollar.
Speaker 1: And by the way, if you ever wanted to spend crypto,
Speaker 1: do you know what you have to do to spend crypto?
Speaker 1: You got to exchange it for the US currency. Then
Speaker 1: you can actually spend this money and it is and
Speaker 1: it is assigned to this So it is simply just
Speaker 1: buying something with a baseball card or buying something with
Speaker 1: a piece of art, except we're calling it crypto. And
Speaker 1: there's no doubt there's a lot of people who have
Speaker 1: over invested in Crypto and are desperate to see this
Speaker 1: legitimized and decided Donald Trump was their best vehicle to
Speaker 1: essentially try to get him to, you know, find a
Speaker 1: way to line his pockets with crypto, to make him
Speaker 1: invested in it so that he too wants to see
Speaker 1: some sort of federal government legitimizing crypto so that they
Speaker 1: can so they can all sort of make whatever money
Speaker 1: they think this crypto should be worth. They want to
Speaker 1: make it work. So you add all this up there,
Speaker 1: you know, this is one of those where I'm going
Speaker 1: to quote Bob Dole from nineteen ninety six when he
Speaker 1: was frustrated that when the Clintons were raising money in
Speaker 1: the White House. But I remember when Republicans thought that
Speaker 1: was a bridge too far. I'll be curious to see
Speaker 1: if any of these Republicans speak up today about the plane,
Speaker 1: about crypto, about this entire trip to the Middle East,
Speaker 1: which seems to be more about personal business dealings than
Speaker 1: it is for anything professional. On behalf of the federal
Speaker 1: government and behalf of the US taxpayers. But here we are,
Speaker 1: and the question is whether this is something that is
Speaker 1: going to be tolerated by elected officials. Look, he's been.
Speaker 1: I think he thinks he's untouchable because he's been impeached twice,
Speaker 1: and he's probably right, what are they going to do
Speaker 1: and peach him again? They don't have the votes, so
Speaker 1: they'll not do it. He knows he can get away
Speaker 1: with it, and he knows that there's enough people in
Speaker 1: his orbit also trying to surf with him and make
Speaker 1: money off of these questionable deals that they're not going
Speaker 1: to say anything. And some of these folks are getting
Speaker 1: campaign money from some of these groups in order to
Speaker 1: also keep quiet. So look, this is a it's a
Speaker 1: blatant violation of the Constitution. Anybody trying to claim that
Speaker 1: it's not is just rationalizing craziness, if you will. The
Speaker 1: idea that this somehow meets does it violate the Amolument's
Speaker 1: clause is willful ignorance on that front. So look, I
Speaker 1: think this trip is he at some you know, I
Speaker 1: don't know, right, I used to say, at some point,
Speaker 1: this is you know, there's only so much the public
Speaker 1: can take. There might be only so much elected officials
Speaker 1: can take, but maybe not. We are living in such
Speaker 1: a transactional environment these days. Everybody's got to get theirs
Speaker 1: everybody's got to monetize this. Everybody's had that. And there's
Speaker 1: also such a nobody's shocked anymore that Donald Trump is
Speaker 1: always trying to make personally gain on whatever he's involved with.
Speaker 1: In fact, in his own mind, he probably sees this
Speaker 1: to the plane or any of these deals as sort
Speaker 1: of a commission. Hey, I'm making the deal. Why shouldn't
Speaker 1: I get a little something? Trust me, if you want
Speaker 1: to ask him that question, I promise you if he would,
Speaker 1: you could lead him down that road where he would
Speaker 1: sort of accept the prevature. Yeah, I should get a
Speaker 1: little something for the effort, because these people are only
Speaker 1: making deals because they're making deals with me. That's that
Speaker 1: would be the an example of that kind of of
Speaker 1: that kind of rationalization. So look, this is this should
Speaker 1: be one of those things that should be extraordinarily uh
Speaker 1: one of these moments. It should be a feeding frenzy,
Speaker 1: and it won't be. There should be bipartisan outrage, but
Speaker 1: there won't be. Again, I'm old enough to remember when
Speaker 1: Nuke Gingrich thought the Democratic Speaker of the House Jim Wright,
Speaker 1: was unfairly making money on a book deal and drove
Speaker 1: him out of the speakership. I'll be curious to see
Speaker 1: if Nuke Gingrich says a word about what's going on
Speaker 1: with with with Qatar essentially bribing the United States, because
Speaker 1: here is Katar the chief patron of AMAS, and they're
Speaker 1: they're doing everything they can to keep us off their back,
Speaker 1: how by essentially buying America off by the way, Qatar
Speaker 1: has been buying up you know, they have a piece
Speaker 1: of the Wizards and the Caps. This is not a small,
Speaker 1: d democratic country, mind you. And yet they have been
Speaker 1: buying up various entities in DC. They are huge, Uh,
Speaker 1: they're huge, sort of contributors to the lobbying community as
Speaker 1: a whole. There's plenty of events that get held in
Speaker 1: DC that couldn't be held without the generosity of the Kataris.
Speaker 1: And that's the that's the corrupt bargain that I think
Speaker 1: both parties have made with the with these Gulf states. Again,
Speaker 1: these are places that don't give women equal rights, that
Speaker 1: treat that don't that don't exactly have democratic values, and
Speaker 1: we turn the other way because of how much money
Speaker 1: they give they put into our system in this town. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then of course whatever personal benefit that is happening
Speaker 1: with the Trump family and the derivative businesses involving the
Speaker 1: Trump family. So look, this is I've said before it's kleptocracy,
Speaker 1: that he's turned the party in the kleptocracy. This is
Speaker 1: yet the latest sign. I mean, the idea that he
Speaker 1: is going to get a personal plane to use once
Speaker 1: he's done being president from Katar via this gift to
Speaker 1: the federal government. I mean, it is audacious. That is audacious.
Speaker 1: I will give you that. I mean, every time you think, boy,
Speaker 1: would he really do that, you know what the answer is,
Speaker 1: The answer is always yes. All right. A few other
Speaker 1: things I want to hit on. I was glad to
Speaker 1: see that the Vice President and the Secretary State did
Speaker 1: get involved in India and Pakistan and trying to get
Speaker 1: this ceasefire. Is the last time i'd left, you made
Speaker 1: it pretty clear that I think what was happening over
Speaker 1: there is an indirect result of america retreat, essentially of
Speaker 1: the Trump administration signaling that America is going to be
Speaker 1: retreating from the world stage, not wanting multilateral agreements and
Speaker 1: all of this, and that there was going to be
Speaker 1: this this pullback. When you have this pullback, more countries
Speaker 1: are going to take matters into their own hands. When
Speaker 1: you signal that you're for nationalism, you're signaling the other
Speaker 1: countries they should be nationalistic in their decision making, whether
Speaker 1: it's on the economy or national security, and I think
Speaker 1: that we had that. But it was good to see
Speaker 1: that both Ruvio Advance realized that America is the essential nation,
Speaker 1: whether whether we want to admit it or not. And
Speaker 1: if we're not involved, nobody else is going to get
Speaker 1: involved to try to try to stop a war between
Speaker 1: two nuclear powers. So I was glad to see it.
Speaker 1: I know there's been some back and forth, you know,
Speaker 1: if you're telling me the United States is over the
Speaker 1: role that Rubio and Vance played because Donald Trump announced it.
Speaker 1: I know. I'm shocked that that could possibly be the case.
Speaker 1: But the fact is we did get involved a little bit.
Speaker 1: A few other things that I want to get to
Speaker 1: before we get to the conversation with Jasmine Crockett. I
Speaker 1: can't believe the ad campaign speaking of US taxpayer dollars
Speaker 1: being used for personal and political purposes. I was on
Speaker 1: Saturday morning. There wasn't a lot to watch as far
Speaker 1: as live sports was concerned, so I put on my
Speaker 1: ESPN Plus. I was watching a little multi screen of
Speaker 1: the Truest Championship. It's a golf tournament based in Philadelphia,
Speaker 1: and it had a lot of the top tier golfers
Speaker 1: actually participating. Right these non major events, they're usually frankly,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm sort of a I watch golf if
Speaker 1: there's nothing else on, and there are players that I
Speaker 1: recognize playing, and in this case there were Roy mack
Speaker 1: le Roy people like that. Well, there was one ad
Speaker 1: that kept running over and over, and it was an
Speaker 1: ad paid for by the US Homeland Security Department, and
Speaker 1: it was voiced by Christy no and it was basically
Speaker 1: bragging about all the arrests, bragging about showing footage of
Speaker 1: that questionable prison that's been run in El Salvador that
Speaker 1: certainly has plenty of outside groups say violates basic human
Speaker 1: rights and certainly doesn't abide by I think US standards
Speaker 1: of how we would be expected to keep a prisoner
Speaker 1: and things like that, and it's paid for with US TEXTPA.
Speaker 1: It felt like a campaign ad. You know, she was
Speaker 1: saying President We're keeping President Trump's promise, We're rounding these
Speaker 1: people up. And it was clear think about what this
Speaker 1: was being advertised on golf. The demographic of the golf
Speaker 1: fan is older and wider, and they are trying desperately
Speaker 1: to make them think that a roundup has taken place.
Speaker 1: So they put the big number on screen, one hundred
Speaker 1: thousand detained, and I guess in order to have it
Speaker 1: pass legal muster. At the end is this awkward transition
Speaker 1: where Nomes says, so download the app. If you download
Speaker 1: the app, you can avoid this fate and you might
Speaker 1: be able to come back. So it was clear that
Speaker 1: that was what their lawyer instructed them, that if you
Speaker 1: want to run this campaign at paid for with taxpayer dollars,
Speaker 1: you've got to at least make an attempt to do
Speaker 1: a public service of some sort, and right at the
Speaker 1: very end, the public services to download the CPP app
Speaker 1: in order to avoid the fate apparently of going to
Speaker 1: prison in Al Salvador. I will just say again, considering
Speaker 1: what I opened with with this plane, you know, to
Speaker 1: find other bits, the amount of sort of illegal uneff,
Speaker 1: the goal behavior taking place in different cabinet agencies. It's
Speaker 1: just blows my mind. And this one again, is it
Speaker 1: going to rise up a lot of people aren't going
Speaker 1: to notice it, but it's your taxpayer dollars being used
Speaker 1: to try to sort of buff up President Trump's image
Speaker 1: on the border and again or and frankly a way
Speaker 1: too for Christy Nome to give herself more of a
Speaker 1: national name as well, but again using taxpayer dollars, because
Speaker 1: I promise you there wasn't the people they're trying to
Speaker 1: get to download that app weren't watching the truest Championship
Speaker 1: golf tournament. All right, There's a lot more that I
Speaker 1: wanted to get to. We've got current negotiations as I'm
Speaker 1: talking now here on Sunday evening. We know that the
Speaker 1: China talks in Switzerland continue, fourth round of talks with
Speaker 1: Iran continue. It is clear Donald Trump, being missed not
Speaker 1: the best negotiator. His signal he's desperate to make a
Speaker 1: deal with both of them. So some form of a
Speaker 1: deal I think is going to be coming, and coming soon.
Speaker 1: It'll be interesting to see how the Gulf States. By
Speaker 1: the way, there's no doubt Donald Trump's not going to
Speaker 1: want to have an Iranian deal while he's over there.
Speaker 1: So my guess is that that continues to get slow
Speaker 1: walked a little bit. He wants to get through his
Speaker 1: trip with the Saudi's UAE guitar and then and you know,
Speaker 1: get his loot, including the plane. Then when he comes back,
Speaker 1: my guess is that's when he's going to do that
Speaker 1: Iran deal, because the Iran Deal isn't going to be
Speaker 1: popular in Saudi Arabia and the Iron Deal isn't going
Speaker 1: to be popular in Israel, because it's clear jd Vance
Speaker 1: has already signaled this that they plan to allow some
Speaker 1: Uranian enrichment if it's for quote unquote civilian power it is.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you this, it looks like Donald Trump's pulling
Speaker 1: a NAFTA that basically he's doing the same deal. He's
Speaker 1: going to be cutting pretty much the same deal with
Speaker 1: the Iranians at Barack Obama cut, but they're just going
Speaker 1: to give it a different name and say, hey, look
Speaker 1: it's a brand new deal. And as for China, obviously
Speaker 1: he already signaled he desperately wants to bring down the
Speaker 1: tariffs and wants jointly to bring down the tariffs. Doesn't
Speaker 1: want to look like we're doing it unilaterally begging the
Speaker 1: Chinese to deal with us. So I imagine something is
Speaker 1: coming there because again we're the ones desperate to make
Speaker 1: a deal, and the Chinese do want to make a
Speaker 1: deal as well. All right enough for me, I hope
Speaker 1: you enjoyed this introduction. Again, I cannot believe that this
Speaker 1: is I mean, this feels like a bad movie plot
Speaker 1: that the President of the United States is taking a
Speaker 1: plane as a gift. It's a gift to the country
Speaker 1: and he's going to pocket it personally. It's and somehow
Speaker 1: this is just going to be allowed to happen. I
Speaker 1: will say this Congress will have the power to prevent
Speaker 1: the Air Force from transferring ownership of that plane to
Speaker 1: the Trump Library, if they so choose to use that power.
Speaker 1: Maybe a Republican House and a Republican Senate wouldn't do it,
Speaker 1: But would a Democratic House and a Republican Senate do it?
Speaker 1: I think they might just something to keep an eye
Speaker 1: all right, let me sneak in a break and when
Speaker 1: we come back. Fascinating conversation with one of the rising
Speaker 1: stars of the Democratic Party, Jasmine Crockett. All right in
Speaker 1: joining me now is one of the rising stars of
Speaker 1: the Democratic Party, Jasmine Crockett, Democratic congresswoman from Dallas, Texas
Speaker 1: representing the thirtieth Congressional District. Congresswoman, welcome to the Chuck Podcast.
Speaker 2: It's good to see you.
Speaker 1: Well, look, I'm going to make you do one of
Speaker 1: my favorite old from the Old Colbert Show was get
Speaker 1: to know a congressional district when he used to do that.
Speaker 1: So tell me yours, take, give, give, my give, our
Speaker 1: listeners and viewers. Here a quick tour of the thirtieth
Speaker 1: district in Dallas, and you know, point out a few landmarks.
Speaker 1: You know, is the school Book Depository in your district
Speaker 1: or not? Is SMU? I say that as a future
Speaker 1: father of an SMU student starting next fall. So tell
Speaker 1: me about the geographic and the and the demographic nature
Speaker 1: of your district.
Speaker 3: Yes, So when most people think of Dallas, it belongs
Speaker 3: to me. Most people associate downtown Dallas and the downtown
Speaker 3: Skyline with Dallas, and all of that is mine. But
Speaker 3: basically that's pretty much as far north as I go.
Speaker 3: I go a little bit further north and I get
Speaker 3: to Dallas love Field, which for all of my Southwest lovers,
Speaker 3: that is exactly where Southwest Airlines is based, along with
Speaker 3: the JSX Airlines for those that like a little bit
Speaker 3: more luxury or I found out that your dogs get
Speaker 3: to fly and kind of have all the space that
Speaker 3: they want.
Speaker 1: Not right, Yes, I've never heard of this thereline they
Speaker 1: let dog free.
Speaker 3: It's I don't know, I haven't been on it, but
Speaker 3: that's what a dog lover told me, is like they
Speaker 3: only fly JSX now because of the space that their
Speaker 3: dog is.
Speaker 2: They don't have to put like their dog under or
Speaker 2: in a cage or something.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: And then you go down.
Speaker 1: In your district, love field is mine, I gotcha, okay.
Speaker 2: And then you.
Speaker 3: Go all the way to the southern Dallas County border.
Speaker 3: You can get from one end of my district to
Speaker 3: the other in about thirty minutes, which there's not a
Speaker 3: lot of members of Congress that can say that.
Speaker 2: So that means that my district is pretty compact.
Speaker 3: You get to the southern border and that kind of
Speaker 3: ends the districts, but you start to get into suburbs.
Speaker 2: My district is majority minority. It is a Section two district.
Speaker 3: So for those of you that have been looking into
Speaker 3: the fights that have been waged at the Supreme Court level,
Speaker 3: and it's all about representation and especially people of color
Speaker 3: being able to elect the representation. It is a very
Speaker 3: historic district. I am only the second person to ever
Speaker 3: represent the district. My predecessor was.
Speaker 1: She got Eddie Bernie Johnson, Kirkman Farmer. Was it ninety
Speaker 1: two her first year, Yes, yes, exactly after the voting
Speaker 1: basically the Updated Voting Rights Act that created the Bush
Speaker 1: the first Bush Bush forty one Justice Department in many
Speaker 1: ways helped for a variety of political motivations, but helped
Speaker 1: make sure there was more representation in African Americans in Congress.
Speaker 3: And she was actually in the Senate, the last black
Speaker 3: woman to actually serve in the Texas Senate. We've only
Speaker 3: had two. The first one is Barbara Jordan. And so
Speaker 3: she actually chaired the redistricting committee that ended up drawing
Speaker 3: these maps. And then so she chaired that committee, did
Speaker 3: that in nineteen ninety and ninety two, she ran for
Speaker 3: the seat, won the seat, and she served until twenty
Speaker 3: two basically, and then I swore in in twenty twenty three.
Speaker 3: The reason that I brought up JSX and Southwest Airlines
Speaker 3: is because I really do have an aviation rich district.
Speaker 3: Not only do I have kind of two airlines that
Speaker 3: are right there anchored in my district. American Airlines is
Speaker 3: right up the street, not in my district, but they're
Speaker 3: so big that they claim us all that is for sure.
Speaker 3: But also air Bus, which some people are starting to
Speaker 3: hear more about Airbus as Boeing what's having issues. Usually
Speaker 3: if you are flying domestically on a plane, it is
Speaker 3: typically an Airbus plane or Boeing, And so Airbus actually
Speaker 3: has a facility that's within my district. Airbus is probably
Speaker 3: better known for their helicopters. If you're in the aviation
Speaker 3: kind of world, they are the ones that build pretty
Speaker 3: much all of our life saving helicopters, whether they are
Speaker 3: helicopters for firefighters and they're helping to fight wildfires or
Speaker 3: whether we're talking about the coast Guard or whether we're
Speaker 3: talking about law enforce. They specially retrofit the helicopters to be, you.
Speaker 2: Know, specific to whichever area they're in.
Speaker 3: So with that, I have a lot of aviation, so
Speaker 3: I have had to learn a lot about aviation. But
Speaker 3: one of the coolest things that I was able to
Speaker 3: do that I think every member should be allowed to do,
Speaker 3: is I was able to actually take a look of
Speaker 3: my district from above because Airbus took me on a
Speaker 3: helicopter ride around my district.
Speaker 1: So what did that teach you. What did that show you?
Speaker 3: So you know, you have people that come in and
Speaker 3: they give you numbers or they tell you that they
Speaker 3: have a type of industry. I could see it. So
Speaker 3: I am a logistically heavy district, Like logistics run the world.
Speaker 3: So beyond these kind of airplanes. These airplanes are flying
Speaker 3: in to Dallas Love or even DFW is where a
Speaker 3: lot of our commerce is flying into. But you know,
Speaker 3: one of the things my predecessor worked on was an
Speaker 3: inland port.
Speaker 2: And now I.
Speaker 3: Could see all the trucks. So I saw all of
Speaker 3: these distribution centers.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: I knew that Home Depot had two distribution centers in
Speaker 3: my district and there's no other district in the country
Speaker 3: that has to. And mind you, I'm compact, so I
Speaker 3: was thinking, oh, I must have a lot. But JC
Speaker 3: Penny's National distribution Center is right there in my district
Speaker 3: and so many others. But I could see it. I
Speaker 3: could see all of the trucking So in talking to
Speaker 3: those that were like, I've got a number of trucking
Speaker 3: schools and I've talked to some of the owners. So
Speaker 3: it really kind of put it all together for me
Speaker 3: to see it from above, and it would probably surprise
Speaker 3: some people that I've actually ridden attractor trailer in my
Speaker 3: district as well, So you go just into my suburbs
Speaker 3: and you can get into a little bit of farming
Speaker 3: as well. But it's mostly an interurban kind of district.
Speaker 3: And so we've got some of the big corporate biggies
Speaker 3: that are based there at and T and others.
Speaker 2: A dating site that I won't miss it.
Speaker 1: I mean, you tell me that the place feels like
Speaker 1: a magnet right now, meaning people just want to move
Speaker 1: to that region, People want to move to that area.
Speaker 3: Do you feel that, Oh yeah, I mean listen, during COVID,
Speaker 3: the DFW area was growing exponentially, and overall we've seen
Speaker 3: the growth in Texas just kind of be off the charts.
Speaker 3: They thought we were going to get four new seats
Speaker 3: in redistricting. We feel like there may have been an undercount.
Speaker 3: There was a little pandemic that was going on. We
Speaker 3: got three new seats and now they're projecting for twenty
Speaker 3: thirty they will get an additional four seats. So no,
Speaker 3: we are growing leaps and bounds in the state of Texas.
Speaker 3: But truly DFW has been one of those fastest growing areas.
Speaker 1: So how'd you get to Texas? How'd you get to Dallas?
Speaker 1: Because I know you were born and were you how
Speaker 1: long did you live.
Speaker 2: In Saint Louis till I was eighteen?
Speaker 1: Okay, so you're you're so, do you consider.
Speaker 2: I am Lewis?
Speaker 3: Yes, Okay, but no, I left at eighteen and that
Speaker 3: was like, I'm like coming back and I haven't been back.
Speaker 2: So left at eighteen.
Speaker 1: S Lewis is a tragedy to me in so many levels.
Speaker 1: I just I it really. I have a lot of
Speaker 1: family there, I've been have so many I go to.
Speaker 1: I go there all the time for various family events. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and Saint Louis was this amazing, thriving city for you know,
Speaker 1: essentially for the first eighty years of the twentieth century.
Speaker 1: And it's sort of like it's like it lost every
Speaker 1: like it lost every deal right TWA left and you
Speaker 1: know this left and the financial age edwards left and
Speaker 1: the just it all just and you're like, I remember
Speaker 1: during the Amazon headquarters debate, I was like, please go
Speaker 1: to Saint Louis, Please put it in Saint Louis. It
Speaker 1: is we need to revise this great American city. What
Speaker 1: would you do if you could wave a magic.
Speaker 2: Wand I think that you're right.
Speaker 3: I mean, even though I still would not want to
Speaker 3: go home, I do. I think that you point out
Speaker 3: an interesting fact because I feel like Saint Louis didn't
Speaker 3: keep up. I feel like Saint Louis was ahead of
Speaker 3: the curve.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: We had the Mississippi to the west.
Speaker 1: It was about that was the port everything.
Speaker 3: Went through up and down the Mississippi right, So like
Speaker 3: this was like a bustling area, but like as far
Speaker 3: as being able to kind of transition with the times
Speaker 3: and being able to kind of keep up, I think
Speaker 3: at one point in time it was like they were
Speaker 3: ahead of the times, and then they got a little
Speaker 3: bit behind. I mean, I'm glad that Anheuser Bush is
Speaker 3: still right there anchored in Saint Louis.
Speaker 1: I know, but it's really it's, you know, look the.
Speaker 3: Truck they're all over because I don't know the right
Speaker 3: there in my district in Texas, Yes, we actually have
Speaker 3: the sixth largest beer distributor right there in my district.
Speaker 3: I do lots of Vedam district too, But nevertheless, Anne
Speaker 3: has Bush still is, you know, I mean, that's this
Speaker 3: is I grew up as a girl.
Speaker 2: Looking at the class deals.
Speaker 3: I mean, a very big thing, but I think that
Speaker 3: it's a lesson that we need to learn. I mean,
Speaker 3: if I had a magic wand, I would say that
Speaker 3: I would try to get the population in Saint Louis
Speaker 3: educated in a future workforce capacity or a present day
Speaker 3: workforce capacity, understanding technology understanding STEM, which also goes with
Speaker 3: technology obviously, but I would get them focused on that
Speaker 3: figuring out who is going to be over making sure
Speaker 3: that we can safeguard what AI is and what it ain't.
Speaker 3: So we need people that are trained up and knowledgeable enough.
Speaker 3: But we'll do the good work of being government employees,
Speaker 3: even though you could go out in private industry and
Speaker 3: make more, but I would really steer them towards more technology.
Speaker 3: And then even as we talk about logistics, like I
Speaker 3: don't really know what other kind of logistical kind of
Speaker 3: angles they have besides the actual Mississippi right.
Speaker 1: So honestly, it's not a bad one.
Speaker 3: I know it's not long that I'm definitely not seeing that,
Speaker 3: But like the fact is, I'm talking to you about
Speaker 3: my district and how many planes come through, right, Like
Speaker 3: W is one of the.
Speaker 1: Laws that's commerce and commerce leads to.
Speaker 2: Jobs, and that's exactly right.
Speaker 3: So like it's kind of you know, and and when
Speaker 3: I talked about those trucks, right, it's the trains, it's
Speaker 3: the trucks, and it's the planes, right. And so even
Speaker 3: though I don't have a big river coming through my district,
Speaker 3: we are doing logistics. And logistics is so ort it
Speaker 3: was so important because you know, traditionally we have been
Speaker 3: a global economy. We historically have been building and building
Speaker 3: and building out our our our trade.
Speaker 2: You know, in a very global way.
Speaker 3: And now I don't really know so, but I would
Speaker 3: say building around what you have that naturally occurs and
Speaker 3: building that up, I think it could be fantastic and phenomenal.
Speaker 3: So I think logistics would be a very strong space.
Speaker 3: And then from an educational space, I think just anything
Speaker 3: that you could do for getting people trained up for AI,
Speaker 3: which I think is truly taken over in this moment.
Speaker 3: And the reason I say it's a lesson is because
Speaker 3: I think that we are not paying attention to like
Speaker 3: what happened to the Saint louis Is of the world,
Speaker 3: right and deciding that we won't be that as a country.
Speaker 3: And I think that we are running the risk of that,
Speaker 3: especially as we're going through these mass deportations and things
Speaker 3: like that, like not making sure or not allowing us
Speaker 3: to have the best of everything that we can have.
Speaker 1: Right, you know, it's helped Detroit they took a lot
Speaker 1: of immigrant populations, they took a lot of refugees. You know,
Speaker 1: it's helped Minneapolis, Saint Paul, they took a lot of refugees.
Speaker 1: Refugees and first gen immigrants are the building blocks of
Speaker 1: economic dynamism within a generation.
Speaker 2: No, absolutely, you're absolutely right.
Speaker 3: And literally I've traveled the world on congressional delegation trips
Speaker 3: where my colleagues speak a lot differently when we get
Speaker 3: out to other portions of the world.
Speaker 1: Don't you wish that that's the way Congress work? Those
Speaker 1: I hear, those codels are what get members of Congress
Speaker 1: to run for reelection again, meaning it sort of it
Speaker 1: gives them hope. Boy, when we don't have a bunch
Speaker 1: of idiot reporters like me running around shoving tape recorders
Speaker 1: in your face or trying to get you to trash
Speaker 1: each other, you guys could get some stuff done.
Speaker 3: No, I mean they believe in climate change. When we're
Speaker 3: out of the country, like it's like a whole other world.
Speaker 3: When we start talking about the exchange programs, like most
Speaker 3: people don't know, as we talk about in healthcare, healthcare
Speaker 3: worker shortage that like Thailand produces like more nurses than anybody,
Speaker 3: and so as we're trying to make sure that we
Speaker 3: can take care of our population, and as there are
Speaker 3: people that are looking for opportunities and they're already trained up,
Speaker 3: or the fact that there's these attacks on our institutions
Speaker 3: right now, well that's not helping when it comes down
Speaker 3: to exchange programs and being able to take the unique
Speaker 3: backgrounds that some of these amazing students have and bring
Speaker 3: them in in a collaborative way, or when we're snatching
Speaker 3: students off the streets right and throwing them into some
Speaker 3: form of captivity and revoking their student visas, like that's
Speaker 3: not making people want to send some of their best
Speaker 3: and brightest to the institutions that historically have been looked
Speaker 3: at as the best institutions. I can't tell you how
Speaker 3: many times we've sat down across from whether it was
Speaker 3: a Prime minister or a president or a secretary of
Speaker 3: this or that, and they tell us that they went
Speaker 3: over to the United States and got their education. Literally,
Speaker 3: people around the world have been educated right here in
Speaker 3: the United States, and people in their home countries respect that.
Speaker 2: They look at that and it has been a badgot That's.
Speaker 1: Why they're in charge, exactly because getting an American education
Speaker 1: put them a little bit higher on their ladder.
Speaker 3: That's exactly right. And I don't know that that's going
Speaker 3: to be the case going forward.
Speaker 1: So let me start with you've been in Congress a
Speaker 1: short time. There's gonna be some people this is the
Speaker 1: first time they've heard you for more than a few minutes,
Speaker 1: meaning they may have gotten a piece of you, maybe
Speaker 1: seen something go viral. When it comes to communicating in
Speaker 1: the modern era, going viral matters, But going viral can
Speaker 1: be a double edged sort. And I think you tell me,
Speaker 1: I feel like you've experienced both edges of that sort
Speaker 1: at times. How much of it is a necessary evil
Speaker 1: in your mind, and how much of this is just, Hey,
Speaker 1: this is the way it works now, and you know
Speaker 1: this is the way I have to do it.
Speaker 3: I don't think virality matters. That may not be a
Speaker 3: popular opinion, but when I got elected, no one in
Speaker 3: my district ever expected or thought that I would go viral.
Speaker 3: So I don't think that it matters in the sense
Speaker 3: that I think people should say, if I'm going to
Speaker 3: be relevant in politics, then this is what needs to
Speaker 3: be done. We know that one of the most unpopular
Speaker 3: people in Congress, she has gone viral a lot, and
Speaker 3: you know, when it comes down to her being able
Speaker 3: to raise money, She's been able to raise money from
Speaker 3: every crevice of kind of the country because of that,
Speaker 3: and that's kind of how she's been able to build
Speaker 3: a platform. But I think has huh build I don't
Speaker 3: think she has, right, Like, so the things.
Speaker 1: That really assume you're referring to Margie Taylor Green, I am, yeah, No,
Speaker 1: I say that because I think that that's that's the
Speaker 1: you know, that's usually what happens if you want to
Speaker 1: be if you want to try to go that road,
Speaker 1: you're not going to actually get stuff done on the inside.
Speaker 2: Absolutely.
Speaker 3: I think that that that is a risk that certain
Speaker 3: people run. It depends on, like for what reasons. Right, Like,
Speaker 3: for instance, I was just applauding Lauren Underwood for an
Speaker 3: exchange that she had this week with Christine Nome, and
Speaker 3: you know, it went viral. I mean, it's kind of
Speaker 3: everywhere where Christy Nome is kind of wavering on, you know,
Speaker 3: the Constitution and whether or not you know she is
Speaker 3: Secretary of the Department of Homeland, should actually like follow it, right,
Speaker 3: you know. I think that there are certain things that
Speaker 3: it absolutely is very important that that information gets out.
Speaker 3: And for some people, if I'm being honest, like a
Speaker 3: lot of people that may be listening in, they obviously
Speaker 3: have time to do it. But the reality is that
Speaker 3: the average American is trying to figure out how they're
Speaker 3: going to put food on the table, a roof over
Speaker 3: their head, clothes on their kids' backs, and so they
Speaker 3: only have time for a TikTok, right Like, they only
Speaker 3: have those little moments, And so I do think it
Speaker 3: does bring value in that way. But as far as
Speaker 3: being an actual member of Congress, No, I think what
Speaker 3: matters most as a member of Congress is that you
Speaker 3: sit down and you do things like what we do,
Speaker 3: which is we send out weekly emails that are newsletters
Speaker 3: that give you pictures of the meetings that I've taken
Speaker 3: with uptext on what happened in those meetings. You can
Speaker 3: see videos, video clips of meet and commit You can
Speaker 3: see me in district if that's where I was, and
Speaker 3: then we give out other information. We also send out mailers.
Speaker 3: We also do what we call community like office hours,
Speaker 3: so we go out and we don't make people necessarily
Speaker 3: come in, so sometimes they're after hours, but they are
Speaker 3: in other parts of our district. So we've been to
Speaker 3: every single city multiple times, and we send out text
Speaker 3: messages with information. I think that's what matters in Congress
Speaker 3: because ultimately, regardless of how viral a member may or
Speaker 3: may not be, at the end of the day, you
Speaker 3: only get reelected one way, and that way is by
Speaker 3: making sure that you are communicating with your district.
Speaker 1: Well, I want to go in so many directions here,
Speaker 1: including Texas politics, but let me start with the Oversight Committee.
Speaker 1: Oh God, because no, I mean I sit there. You know. Look,
Speaker 1: I'm one of those journalists who always rolls their eyes
Speaker 1: when there's an oversight committee hearing, right, because it feels
Speaker 1: like predictable partisan talking points, right if its depending on
Speaker 1: who's you know, of one half of the questioners defending
Speaker 1: the person being being questioned in the other half, and
Speaker 1: then it's always like, oh whoa a member of the
Speaker 1: same party asked a tough question right, that becomes the
Speaker 1: news rather than let me ask you this. You've you've
Speaker 1: watched this, now you've participated. How can we improve oversight?
Speaker 1: And would it be better if there were no TV cameras?
Speaker 2: It would absolutely be better if there were no cameras.
Speaker 2: I'm sure that that will never happen.
Speaker 1: But I know c SPAN is one of those things like, hey, look,
Speaker 1: I'm a sunshine guy, but I also don't believe in
Speaker 1: cameras in the courtroom. Give me audio. Give me all
Speaker 1: the audio in the world. I'll take all the live
Speaker 1: audio in the world. If we cameras in the courtroom
Speaker 1: gives us too many Lancidos, and that's not a good thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think though, I mean, if you've got people,
Speaker 3: if you've got like a president that doesn't understand that
Speaker 3: he took an oath to the Constitution, like to protect
Speaker 3: and defend it, I don't I think you're given them
Speaker 3: a little too much credit. Like we have people that
Speaker 3: are elected in government and truly don't understand how it works.
Speaker 3: And so in order for oversight to work the way
Speaker 3: that it should, then it honestly would take people that
Speaker 3: understand what we're supposed to be doing. For instance, today
Speaker 3: I had to have a DOGE subcommittee hearing, and for
Speaker 3: everybody out in the general public, when they hear DOGE,
Speaker 3: they hear Department of Governmental Efficiency. This is all supposedly
Speaker 3: about efficiency. The reason that we have had to fire
Speaker 3: a historic number of you know, federal employees in such
Speaker 3: a short amount of time is because it's more efficient.
Speaker 3: Not true, right, like, but all of these things that
Speaker 3: we've experienced. The reason that you know, people may not
Speaker 3: have their life saving healthcare across you know, the ocean,
Speaker 3: is because they had to cut off USAID because it
Speaker 3: was efficient. Like that's what it was coined as. And
Speaker 3: my hearing today was about trans people fencing. I mean
Speaker 3: our argument was, please tell me what part of like
Speaker 3: we read through the mission of dog as they created
Speaker 3: the subcommittee, what does that have to do with anything?
Speaker 2: And then they even admit it.
Speaker 3: They were like, well, yeah, you know US fencing. We
Speaker 3: know that we don't give you any money, you get
Speaker 3: no federal doubts.
Speaker 1: What are we doing Wait a minute, let me let
Speaker 1: me get this straight. The US fencing team as in
Speaker 1: like the little it was the sword fighting, is that
Speaker 1: what we're talking about.
Speaker 2: It's all about fencing.
Speaker 3: This was about girls fencing and I'm trying to think
Speaker 3: of the name of the I'll get you the name.
Speaker 1: Of the world meaning but meaning that you know, with
Speaker 1: the work mask and all this stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, okay, yes, we had to have.
Speaker 1: A hearing by hearing on sword fighting, like I mean.
Speaker 3: So literally it's like, I mean, I hear you, right,
Speaker 3: but like these people don't even understand and maybe they
Speaker 3: wouldn't have a hearing on.
Speaker 2: That there were no cameras, like maybe like.
Speaker 1: I don't, Well, that's the thing. I mean, that's that's
Speaker 1: would be one of my contentions is that you take
Speaker 1: away the incentive to to essentially, you know, perform for
Speaker 1: a base political base. And in that case, there's no
Speaker 1: doubt that's just performance, right, that's just throwing chum into
Speaker 1: the water. Would it cut back on that, and you know,
Speaker 1: I assume it would, But then again, you know, would
Speaker 1: the country be even less informed about what Congress does? Right?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's exactly.
Speaker 1: Let's tell let's talk about this internal I don't know
Speaker 1: what you call it debate. This is it a generational
Speaker 1: divide or an ideological divide inside the Democratic Party? And
Speaker 1: are they one and the same?
Speaker 2: I think it is more ideological. I think that.
Speaker 3: You can find persons that absolutely believe that there needs
Speaker 3: to be a more aggressive kind of fight in this moment,
Speaker 3: and they're all ages, you know. And when I think
Speaker 3: about some of you know, the strongest voices, you know,
Speaker 3: I'm always going to say Maxine Waters is going to
Speaker 3: be like one of the first ones who's literally gonna
Speaker 3: call out whatever. In Maxine is like eighty six eighties.
Speaker 3: I mean, she's like up there, right, And I don't
Speaker 3: think anyone I.
Speaker 1: Don't hear a lot of progressive saying that that either
Speaker 1: Maxine Waters or Bernie Sanders are too old to be
Speaker 1: talking correct.
Speaker 2: So that's why I really don't think.
Speaker 3: I think that it's more so a mindset, and I
Speaker 3: think that they are more so concerned about kind of
Speaker 3: those that are stuck in tradition and stuck in this
Speaker 3: idea of the institutions while not recognizing that the institutions
Speaker 3: are literally burning around us, right like they're like over there,
Speaker 3: you know, they've got their water hoses. They're like nope, nope,
Speaker 3: it's we're going to I vacillate.
Speaker 1: Look, you're I'm one of these people. I vacillate between Hey,
Speaker 1: let's let's save the institution. Verse is now let's rebuild
Speaker 1: the institution, meaning like you know, you got to save
Speaker 1: what's left, you got a salvage what you have, right.
Speaker 1: And I understand that's probably an older mindset, right, one
Speaker 1: that says, oh, I'm back in my day, I remember
Speaker 1: this all came together, versus those that are newer to
Speaker 1: the situation, going, what are you talking about? Like that
Speaker 1: didn't work, That's why we're here, right.
Speaker 3: So I think it's more so our issue is more
Speaker 3: so how do you save the institution?
Speaker 2: And what is worth salvaging?
Speaker 3: Right? Because when you think about like a house burning,
Speaker 3: like if there's a child or a loved one in there,
Speaker 3: you're going to go and like, let me go get
Speaker 3: the kid, right, Like forget the clothes, forget the pictures.
Speaker 3: And I think that that's where we are. It's like
Speaker 3: what parts of this are worth saving? Because there are
Speaker 3: parts of this that failed us in the first place,
Speaker 3: and frankly some of them that never worked anyway, like
Speaker 3: never worked in a way that they worked for all
Speaker 3: of us.
Speaker 2: But I think the biggest debate is like how do
Speaker 2: you do that?
Speaker 3: Right? I think that that is why there's the discussions
Speaker 3: about David Hogg and his approach to it, and it's like,
Speaker 3: do you go after you know, safe Democrats and decide
Speaker 3: that you're going to primary them, or do you just
Speaker 3: say never mind, like a democrat is a Democrat, go
Speaker 3: after the Republicans because they are the ones that.
Speaker 2: Are the arsonists of this story.
Speaker 3: I think that like it's about how you fight that
Speaker 3: we kind of differ, or you know, you can look,
Speaker 3: the State of the Union is really the best example
Speaker 3: of like how everyone sees this moment differently, right, Like
Speaker 3: it's like we went out, we campaigned, we were like,
Speaker 3: this fool is a dictator and he's going to try to.
Speaker 2: Tear everything down.
Speaker 3: And that was before the one hundred days, when we
Speaker 3: literally have receipts of him doing it right. And he's
Speaker 3: up there and he's given a State of the Union,
Speaker 3: And who is it that is most disruptive a man
Speaker 3: in his seventies. It's Al Green, someone who is of
Speaker 3: the civil rights error and believes in civil disobedience.
Speaker 1: And this horse, as the late John Lewis used to
Speaker 1: call it, good trouble.
Speaker 3: Exactly, and he believes in dealing with this completely differently.
Speaker 2: And then you have those that sat there and didn't
Speaker 2: do anything.
Speaker 3: Then you have those that had the signs that everybody
Speaker 3: got drove about, and then you had those of us
Speaker 3: that decided that we were going to walk out right.
Speaker 3: I think that that's the issue. I think that in
Speaker 3: our hearts, none of us like what's going on. It's
Speaker 3: just a matter of we cannot get on a similar
Speaker 3: page of like what does the response look like? What
Speaker 3: does the fight look like? And I think that's really
Speaker 3: our bigger issue. And I think that some people believe
Speaker 3: if you've been in the institution too long, that there's
Speaker 3: no way you were willing to fight back against it.
Speaker 1: What's your assessment of how the Democrats got into the situation.
Speaker 3: I think it's been being too nice to be perfectly honest.
Speaker 3: I mean, I remember when I was in the state House,
Speaker 3: and you know, we fled Texas and we went to
Speaker 3: DC and we were trying to kind of ring the
Speaker 3: alarms about these horrific voter suppression bills that the Heritage
Speaker 3: Foundation dropped into Texas, dropped into Georgia, dropped into Florida.
Speaker 3: Like they were being very strategic about making sure that
Speaker 3: they could minimize certain voices. And so you know what,
Speaker 3: I wish that the Democrats in the Senate would have
Speaker 3: pushed half as hard and said, you know what, when
Speaker 3: it comes to something foundational such as voting rights, which
Speaker 3: we are basically taking our authority from the Constitution, there's
Speaker 3: a car about for that right. Like they have come
Speaker 3: up with carveouts for what they wanted to do, and
Speaker 3: I think that that could have prevented some of it.
Speaker 3: It's the same thing as relates to the reauthorization of
Speaker 3: the Voting Rights Acts, like they now have gone in
Speaker 3: and decimated so many of these districts because they're like,
Speaker 3: oh well, it's like district's gone wild, right, And when
Speaker 3: you look at our margins in the House, we lost
Speaker 3: by three seats.
Speaker 1: Oh, you lost by redistricting. You didn't lose it. You
Speaker 1: lost by the Florida and the North Carolina remaps and
Speaker 1: in New York and the inability to do the remat
Speaker 1: in New York. No, this was all done in the
Speaker 1: courtroom now, correct, correct.
Speaker 2: But they had the legislation right, and they refused to
Speaker 2: do a carveout.
Speaker 3: So like, if we're not going to fight for our
Speaker 3: foundational things, then I get why people are like, I'm
Speaker 3: gonna sit at home, and I'm gonna sit on the
Speaker 3: couch because, yeah, they may do bad, but y'all might
Speaker 3: doing nothing anyway.
Speaker 1: Right, So let me ask this, why do you think
Speaker 1: Trump won? And why do you think he won with
Speaker 1: some voters that were on the Blue team at least
Speaker 1: in twenty twelve and twenty twenty. I'm not so sure
Speaker 1: they were there in twenty sixteen. I think they didn't
Speaker 1: show up.
Speaker 2: I'm going to say that this was a ViBe's election,
Speaker 2: and I think.
Speaker 1: I hate that expression no offense. I don't know, but
Speaker 1: I know vibes. This is the cranky old man in me.
Speaker 1: You know, my gen exer. You're almost you're you're like
Speaker 1: you you're millennial technical.
Speaker 2: I am barely, but you're.
Speaker 1: A little more gen x in probably how you lived.
Speaker 2: Yes, So what I will say is this.
Speaker 3: The reason that I say that is because how many
Speaker 3: interviews have you seen where you ask people, well, why
Speaker 3: did you vote for Trump?
Speaker 2: They can't give you a policy, so we know.
Speaker 1: It always felt to me it was a vote against,
Speaker 1: not a vote for.
Speaker 2: I don't know about that.
Speaker 3: I definitely felt like as far as the people that
Speaker 3: were willing to talk, I felt like it was absolutely
Speaker 3: a vote for him, and if they talked about policies,
Speaker 3: it still wasn't really policies. Like I remember being on
Speaker 3: the road and talking to various men, mostly black men,
Speaker 3: and I say what's up and they'd be like, well,
Speaker 3: we feel like the Democratic Party is emasculating us. And
Speaker 3: then I'd say, how so, right, Like they still weren't
Speaker 3: talking about policy right, Like they weren't Like it's not
Speaker 3: like they answered with like policy per se. The only
Speaker 3: thing that they would say about quote unquote policy was
Speaker 3: about trans vote right, And I would explain to them
Speaker 3: that it's a distraction because I remember being at a
Speaker 3: barbershop in Philly and talking to a guy and he
Speaker 3: had this beautiful little daughter that was running around, and
Speaker 3: I was.
Speaker 2: Like, well, I mean, I hear you, and I'm not
Speaker 2: going to.
Speaker 3: Ask you to change how you believe about whatever you
Speaker 3: believe in that kind of stuff, But like, tell me,
Speaker 3: is that going to better your ability to say, own
Speaker 3: your own barbershop one day? Is that going to better
Speaker 3: your ability to take care of your child? And frankly,
Speaker 3: if you are concerned about who's playing sports, can you
Speaker 3: tell me which trans children go to school with your
Speaker 3: daughter right now? And like he was like, I mean,
Speaker 3: I'm a vote for her, but those are the only
Speaker 3: you know what I mean. But it was kind of
Speaker 3: like that, And so.
Speaker 1: How big do you think this was there? How big
Speaker 1: do you think this black man voter issue with Kamala Harris?
Speaker 1: How much of that do you think was specific to
Speaker 1: hesitation of voting a black man hesitating to vote for
Speaker 1: a black woman.
Speaker 3: I will tell you what I was told, because I
Speaker 3: did think that I definitely think that there was misogyny
Speaker 3: in this across the board, no matter what color male
Speaker 3: you're talking about. I just think that you'd be an
Speaker 3: error to not like know that there was misogyny that existed.
Speaker 3: I will say this though, the very first polling briefing
Speaker 3: that we had with a polster that I trust a lot,
Speaker 3: he briefed the Black Caucus and he said that one
Speaker 3: of the issues that he was running into with black
Speaker 3: and brown.
Speaker 2: Communities was that she had been a prosecutor.
Speaker 1: And this was more of a resume thing that there was.
Speaker 3: There was definitely some resume stuff that this allowed her
Speaker 3: from being able to build the type of rapport of
Speaker 3: trust within these marginalized communities that historically have been targeted.
Speaker 1: This was a huge problem in her own campaign for
Speaker 1: president during the primaries, which is why she pivoted. She
Speaker 1: was trying to get out of that because that was
Speaker 1: being used by other Democratic campaigns to say, hey, you know,
Speaker 1: she was a prosecutor, she was black men in jail,
Speaker 1: and the thing is she right, which is why she
Speaker 1: went down the busing road with you know, she had
Speaker 1: to go to some places that she probably wouldn't have
Speaker 1: normally gone, but she felt she had to because she
Speaker 1: was trying to fix her own biography issues.
Speaker 3: So literally early numbers that we were given, and I
Speaker 3: promise you, I really do trust this.
Speaker 2: Polster said that.
Speaker 3: So if you think back to my DNC speech, one
Speaker 3: of the things that they actually the guidance that I
Speaker 3: was given was to actually lean into her being a prosecutor.
Speaker 2: And I'm like, oh hell, I'm like that is not helpful, right.
Speaker 3: And so so when I did it, I did a
Speaker 3: bit of a swing on it right as a criminal
Speaker 3: defense attorney, and I explained, like, this is the kind
Speaker 3: of prosecutor all would have won it, right, Like, so
Speaker 3: I built it that way. But I did talk to
Speaker 3: some people, even a prominent rapper who was like, I'm
Speaker 3: going to support her, but I don't feel comfortable openly
Speaker 3: endorsing her.
Speaker 2: But I'm going to vote for her. And I'm like why.
Speaker 3: And so he told me that one of the issues
Speaker 3: was just kind of like the prosecutor thing, and I said,
Speaker 3: and I made sure to talk about the things that
Speaker 3: we have been told moved the needle with these groups, right,
Speaker 3: like knowing that she had like second chance programs and
Speaker 3: things like that, like letting them know that she was
Speaker 3: one of the good ones, like one of the ones
Speaker 3: that we would have wanted, if it was Breonna Taylor.
Speaker 3: That I mean, like, that's the kind that you want, right,
Speaker 3: So we were trying to do that. But I think,
Speaker 3: and it goes back to kind of the Trump phenomenon.
Speaker 3: I think that what had been baked in about the
Speaker 3: vice president was that she was a prosecutor. They did
Speaker 3: not know very much beyond that, And when you're talking
Speaker 3: about one hundred and seven days of a campaign, it's
Speaker 3: kind of hard to get that across in actually.
Speaker 1: A classic case where more time would have helped at
Speaker 1: least on that issue.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, I absolutely believe that, especially since you want people
Speaker 3: to not fear you, but you want them to like
Speaker 3: trust you.
Speaker 2: That's what it comes down to.
Speaker 3: It It's like trust and you know, it's like you
Speaker 3: can point out how many lives Trump does or whatever.
Speaker 2: One of the reasons I.
Speaker 3: Think that he got away with trying to paint us
Speaker 3: as liars is where like this dude is not a
Speaker 3: good businessman, but you got to think about his profile
Speaker 3: and you have to think about.
Speaker 2: Who he is.
Speaker 3: And this is very specific to him. You have traveled
Speaker 3: the country, potentially the world and seen buildings with the
Speaker 3: name Trump on the side of them, and then you
Speaker 3: don't get enough FaceTime with somebody to explain, no, his
Speaker 3: name is on the building, but he don't own the building.
Speaker 3: Like you don't like get to get into the minutia
Speaker 3: on that. So he had been built up as this
Speaker 3: amazing smart businessman who had all this money instead of like, no,
Speaker 3: he inherited money when he was born, and frankly, he
Speaker 3: would have had more money if he just sat on
Speaker 3: that money and didn't do anything because he.
Speaker 2: Do you know how hard Yeah, yeah, somebody else beat
Speaker 2: the house.
Speaker 3: I know, it's crazy, but like it's but still like
Speaker 3: how many people know all of these details?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 3: And so that's what So there was this longstanding kind
Speaker 3: of idea of Trump as this successful, smart, hard businessman.
Speaker 3: And then for the most part, what people knew about
Speaker 3: the vice president is that she had been a prosecutor.
Speaker 3: She had been a prosecutor on the state level, she
Speaker 3: had been the attorney general.
Speaker 2: Like they only kind of knew her in that way,
Speaker 2: because I.
Speaker 3: Remember struggling with it way before we were figuring out
Speaker 3: who was gonna run for what or whatever. Sure was
Speaker 3: this issue or this idea of people that said, well,
Speaker 3: I voted for I voted for Kamala, right, Like they
Speaker 3: went and voted for the ticket, right, voted for Joe
Speaker 3: and Kamala, But they really went because they wanted to
Speaker 3: vote for her, and they were saying things like, well,
Speaker 3: we haven't seen her, right, And so then it's like
Speaker 3: vice presidents are really not like that prominent, like that's
Speaker 3: not their job. They are supporting cast members, right. So
Speaker 3: I think we just really got and it wasn't until
Speaker 3: she was stepping in as the actual nominee that she
Speaker 3: could then go ahead and direct her way, and she
Speaker 3: just didn't have enough time in my life.
Speaker 1: Do you feel like she should get another shot at this?
Speaker 3: I think, I mean, I think that she should do
Speaker 3: what she feels like is best. You know, one thing
Speaker 3: that people don't really evaluate is the toll that all
Speaker 3: of this takes on not only you but your family.
Speaker 2: And I think, you.
Speaker 3: Know, there were those that never thought that Joe Biden
Speaker 3: could win, and the third time was the charm. I
Speaker 3: can't say what will happen, And honestly, I personally feel
Speaker 3: like the only reason we ended up with Barack Obama
Speaker 3: was because everything had fallen apart. And so depending on
Speaker 3: how desperate people are, I think that it may absolutely
Speaker 3: propel your not so likely candidate. I think that people,
Speaker 3: potentially even misogynists, would like hold their nose and be
Speaker 3: like forget it.
Speaker 2: Say like I got to do well.
Speaker 1: I mean, there was a lot of those, you know,
Speaker 1: there were great stories about that that you know, you'd
Speaker 1: hear these stories about Barack Obama's two thousand and eight campaign.
Speaker 1: He'd go they'd have canvassers in western Pennsylvania and they'd
Speaker 1: go to these doors that today are probably mega voters,
Speaker 1: but in No. Eight they voted for Obama. And they
Speaker 1: refer to Obama as the African American candidate, but they
Speaker 1: didn't use African American and or black, and it gets
Speaker 1: to the point you just made, which is desperation sometimes
Speaker 1: gets you know, this is what I You know Trump
Speaker 1: and Obama have this in common. Yes, right, there's a
Speaker 1: hand there's a slice of voters who wanted massive change. Look,
Speaker 1: I go back. This is why I think ultimately Barack
Speaker 1: Obama made a mistake endorsing Hillary Clinton. No offense to
Speaker 1: Hillary Clinton. She certainly had earned a lot of things,
Speaker 1: and if this were at a job interview, she was
Speaker 1: the most qualified person for the job. But you and
Speaker 1: I both know it's not a job interview, right, It's
Speaker 1: a different type of deal. And I would argue that
Speaker 1: the Democratic Party picked Obama over Clinton because they didn't
Speaker 1: want the establishment in charge, and that when he went
Speaker 1: establishment that that may have been a fork in the road,
Speaker 1: that if you now go back in time, that maybe
Speaker 1: he should have taken a different a different path.
Speaker 3: Look, you were making an argument for the situation that
Speaker 3: we find ourselves in right now.
Speaker 1: Right, I mean no, which is why I knew I
Speaker 1: definitely think new is going to be I always say this.
Speaker 1: If you look at successful Democratic candidates for president, it's
Speaker 1: usually they're the new candidate there, you know, and they
Speaker 1: were not seen as the front runner at the start.
Speaker 1: Bill Clinton was that way, Jimmy Carter was that way.
Speaker 1: Barack Obama is that way. There is you know, new
Speaker 1: and electable, and it's subjective what electable is. But that's
Speaker 1: and the thing that I can't figure out is who's
Speaker 1: new because every name we're going to mention is not
Speaker 1: new because we're mentioning their names, right, it is going
Speaker 1: to be you know, people will mention Mark Cuban. I
Speaker 1: bet you know Mark Cuban a little bit better than
Speaker 1: most people, given he's a Dallas guy. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know if we if it's smart to go
Speaker 1: with sort of Trump light, but you know, who knows.
Speaker 3: I have no idea, but I do think that we
Speaker 3: won't truly have an idea of which way is going
Speaker 3: to go until we really get closer to the election,
Speaker 3: because I do believe the desperation is going to set in.
Speaker 2: I mean, we will find out.
Speaker 3: You know, there are those that are like, oh, we
Speaker 3: just got to take the house back, and you and
Speaker 3: I have already discussed how these lines are not set
Speaker 3: up for us. I mean, we are like an uphill
Speaker 3: climb in a lot of these races that we really
Speaker 3: should not be in. But even still, I think we
Speaker 3: are going to defy the odds. The question is that
Speaker 3: we're going to defy the odds and have you know
Speaker 3: three seats are we on? Are are we going to
Speaker 3: buy the odds?
Speaker 1: Can you have a working majority?
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're going to have just a ton of people.
Speaker 3: And I think that that will be our first and
Speaker 3: then the Republicans will be given an opportunity to switch
Speaker 3: back and maybe slow down, right because they're like, whoa,
Speaker 3: this rat is big and it's going to continue on
Speaker 3: two years after that.
Speaker 1: I know you've got to go, and I don't want
Speaker 1: to keep you too long, but I do want to
Speaker 1: dabble in Texas politics. You served in that Texas State House.
Speaker 1: I think the most fascinating political story that no one's
Speaker 1: paying attention to is, and you know these folks is
Speaker 1: the leadership of the Texas House is a bipartisan is
Speaker 1: the result of a bipartisan effort that it was sort
Speaker 1: of a rejection of the of the more right wing
Speaker 1: elements of the Texas Republican Party. Is Texas a three
Speaker 1: party state, meaning there's sort of two Republican parties, sort
Speaker 1: of the John Cornyn Party and the and the Ken
Speaker 1: Paxtea Party version of it, and then there's the Democratic Party.
Speaker 1: I mean my described it a bit cynically, but.
Speaker 3: Correctly you are, as We're about to watch what happens
Speaker 3: in this primary, and I think that it's going to
Speaker 3: be interesting because all of the polling says that Paxton
Speaker 3: is the one that's going to make it out of
Speaker 3: that primary, and it's going to make the Republicans' ability
Speaker 3: to win the Senate seat more difficult than it had
Speaker 3: I can tell you for sure that with almost absolute certainty,
Speaker 3: if John Cornyan somehow managed to be the nominee.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's put it this way. There's a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of Dallas Republicans who haven't voted Republican for president, I'm
Speaker 1: guessing now since twenty twelve. Yeah, and they'll vote for
Speaker 1: John Cornyn. They're voting for Ken Paxton, correct.
Speaker 2: Yeah, correct, correct.
Speaker 3: So you know, it'll be interesting to see how whichever
Speaker 3: candidates emerge in that Senate race, how they decide to
Speaker 3: play it. I think there's been this inclination to kind
Speaker 3: of try to be like Republican esque, and it's not
Speaker 3: worked so far. So I just I really don't think
Speaker 3: that well, which path works?
Speaker 1: I mean, neither one of them worked, right. Beto didn't
Speaker 1: do that. Beto went in a different direction, got close
Speaker 1: but lost. Colin Allred when in the hey, I'm I'm
Speaker 1: a John Cornyn type, basically said, you know, he hugged
Speaker 1: Cornan during that race against Cruse, which I think for
Speaker 1: swing voters, I get it. I get that strategy too,
Speaker 1: and he lost by more than Beto did. What does
Speaker 1: that tell you?
Speaker 3: I mean, I think again, I hate to do it.
Speaker 3: Like when you're talking about a tight vote and you're
Speaker 3: talking about tight election, that's when you're going to start
Speaker 3: to get into vibes period. You just are because again
Speaker 3: you have a certain portion of the electorate that does
Speaker 3: not have the time to kind of dig into all
Speaker 3: of the details.
Speaker 1: And Betto broke through and Colin didn't.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, Beto was able to energize so many people.
Speaker 3: But I also think he caught Cruise slippin' right, Like
Speaker 3: Cruse wasn't into that he would have a real race,
Speaker 3: so he had that advantage. But he outworked Cruise definitely,
Speaker 3: like you know, the entire time. So I think that
Speaker 3: Beto did what we needed done in that moment. At least,
Speaker 3: which was to give us a little bit of hope,
Speaker 3: but it was because of how well that he did.
Speaker 3: He lost by three points. We know that Trump only
Speaker 3: won the state by five points. Next thing, you know,
Speaker 3: they want to change all the voting rules, right because
Speaker 3: you end up running away with Texas. There is no
Speaker 3: path for the Republicans to get into the White House.
Speaker 3: And that's why it's really important that we make those investments.
Speaker 3: Texas is the majority.
Speaker 1: Why does the Demo? Why does the net look I'm
Speaker 1: a Floridian and I've watched the National Democratic Party pay
Speaker 1: lip service to Florida Democrats for decades, and now they're
Speaker 1: in a catastrophic situation. I'm seeing the same set of
Speaker 1: lip service was paid to I wonder if the moment's
Speaker 1: been missed in Texas.
Speaker 3: I really do think that we are missing out. But
Speaker 3: I think that we need to get on the ground
Speaker 3: and do the work. And that same election we're talking about,
Speaker 3: we only had seventeen percent of the people turn out.
Speaker 3: Seventeen percent of people.
Speaker 1: This wasn't a registration issue. This was a turnout issue
Speaker 1: in your correct right.
Speaker 3: But like we also do these like tickets where it's
Speaker 3: like that's always the only person that anybody was going
Speaker 3: to vote for, Like there was nothing else that was
Speaker 3: like exciting or jazzing them. So we do this thing
Speaker 3: where it's like, oh, we've got one great candidate, and
Speaker 3: then we don't do anything else. I told you about
Speaker 3: people saying that they showed up and they voted for
Speaker 3: Harris when they were voting for the ticket.
Speaker 2: I think that we've.
Speaker 3: Got to be more strategic about like not just oh,
Speaker 3: let me put somebody who's Hispanic on this ticket, Like,
Speaker 3: let's get strong people to run who can appeal to
Speaker 3: every portion of like our state. Like you can have
Speaker 3: like people that are progressive and have people that are liberal,
Speaker 3: and have people that are better at media than others,
Speaker 3: have people that are black and Latino and Asian.
Speaker 2: We have a large AAPI community.
Speaker 3: So I think that we've got to figure out, like, Okay,
Speaker 3: who will jazz up some folk, like who will get
Speaker 3: them going? And frankly, black people have not been super jazzed.
Speaker 3: Just be perfectly honest. We have more black people in
Speaker 3: the state of Texas than any other state, and so
Speaker 3: like figuring out how to turn them out. When they
Speaker 3: won Georgia, you know what they had turnout way above
Speaker 3: seventeen percent, right, And so that's the thing.
Speaker 2: I think if we can get the turnout, we can win.
Speaker 1: If Nico Harrison ran for office, how many could he
Speaker 1: get elected to anything in Dallas? Right now? Now you
Speaker 1: know how the Lucas situation is it? What of those?
Speaker 1: Do you think that's going to be something that leaves
Speaker 1: a mark for years, for decades or on the maps?
Speaker 2: For sure?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: For sure?
Speaker 3: I mean yeah, the fans were so supportive. We finally
Speaker 3: were getting somewhere and were.
Speaker 1: Relevant, you know. Yeah, yeah, But the only thing that
Speaker 1: matters in Dallas is the Cowboys, right.
Speaker 2: Ultimately, they don't play in Dallas.
Speaker 3: So wow, that's all I'm gonna say on that they
Speaker 3: don't play.
Speaker 1: Wow. Well, well, the only people that play in Dallas
Speaker 1: are the stars in the maps. So that's Dallas's only
Speaker 1: teams in your mind?
Speaker 3: I don't Yeah, yep, they're the ones that play in Dallas.
Speaker 1: Wow. Well they're your constituents, that's for sure. Are you
Speaker 1: running for oversight ranking? For sure?
Speaker 2: Uh? I was pretty sure I was in.
Speaker 3: I just got a phone call from a member that
Speaker 3: may complicate my pathway.
Speaker 1: So if you could give a keem Jeffries one piece
Speaker 1: of advice, what would it be?
Speaker 3: I think that a piece of advice would be to
Speaker 3: embrace all portions of are Caucus as as Democrats as
Speaker 3: a whole, and make sure that we have implies.
Speaker 1: You don't think he has been what do you think
Speaker 1: he's been too? Do you think he's been too trying
Speaker 1: to be too strategic?
Speaker 3: I think that I think we focused on being kind
Speaker 3: of completely unified, and I think what works in one
Speaker 3: district doesn't necessarily work in another district. And I think
Speaker 3: being seen is given permission for everyone to kind of
Speaker 3: be what they have to fight.
Speaker 1: Maybe have a debate, go ahead and let it be
Speaker 1: in public a little bit. Look, this is what happened
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety Bill Clinton, Jesse Jackson Robe. They had
Speaker 1: a big, loud debate, and guess what, the Democratic Party
Speaker 1: didn't lose the popular vote but twice in the next
Speaker 1: thirty years.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we'll see, but I've got to run.
Speaker 1: I appreciate well, I appreciate your time.
Speaker 2: It's been playing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I'll be bugging you again in the future.
Speaker 2: Absolutely.
Speaker 1: Well, I hope you enjoyed that interview with Jasmine Crockett.
Speaker 1: Like I said, I'm gonna have a couple other interviews
Speaker 1: with some other Democrats pitching their ideas on this moment,
Speaker 1: how Democrats should be doing it, how Democrats should be
Speaker 1: handling it. So take notes here and tell me what
Speaker 1: you and then as we get more it'll be interesting
Speaker 1: to compare and contrast the different conversations as you've already had,
Speaker 1: how various Democrats want to handle this moment. All right,
Speaker 1: before I go, let me do a little bit of
Speaker 1: Ask Chuck.
Speaker 2: Ask Chuck.
Speaker 1: We're going to do one question and it's a terrific question,
Speaker 1: and it's a question I've had in my back of
Speaker 1: my head for a while. Now. This comes from Peter Quebec.
Speaker 1: I hope I pronounced your name right, Peter, your last name,
Speaker 1: And it starts a mirror After the Supreme Court decision
Speaker 1: which largely struck down Roe v. Wade, conventional wisdom from politicians,
Speaker 1: news outlets, and analysts held that abortion was going to
Speaker 1: be the north star for Democrats, that it was going
Speaker 1: to rouse not only the base but women overall, and
Speaker 1: it was touted as what would propel Aamala Harris to
Speaker 1: victory in twenty twenty four. However, after the election, abortion
Speaker 1: basically disappeared as any kind of issue or talking point.
Speaker 1: I haven't heard it mentioned on any of the Sunday
Speaker 1: talk shows since November, and none of the numerous political
Speaker 1: podcasts I listened to left or right have discussed it.
Speaker 1: What do you think has happened if Democrats abandoned abortion
Speaker 1: as a cause. So I don't think they've abandoned the cause,
Speaker 1: but I will tell you this when, and this has
Speaker 1: been true of cultural and social issues for some time,
Speaker 1: that when economic issues are front and center, all everything
Speaker 1: else goes by the wayside. Most cultural issues go by
Speaker 1: the wayside. Usually if abortion's being talked about front and center,
Speaker 1: it means the economy is not going is going fine? Right?
Speaker 1: When the economy is good, that's when there's more of
Speaker 1: a focus on cultural issues. So I think this is
Speaker 1: a little bit of a temporary sort of respite on
Speaker 1: the abortion issue, because the facts are the facts. Right
Speaker 1: wherever it's been on the ballot, wherever it's it is
Speaker 1: a central issue, there's only one side that seems to
Speaker 1: to be winning public opinion here. So I don't think
Speaker 1: it's lost its residence, but I do think Democrats are
Speaker 1: a little spooked by it because they looked like that
Speaker 1: they were not focused on the economy. Right, There's been
Speaker 1: this idea that it's you either focus on the economy
Speaker 1: or you focus on personal liberty issues. And so I
Speaker 1: think that that's why you've seen so many Democrats lately
Speaker 1: not do it. I suspect though, that you know, I
Speaker 1: promise you in Virginia you'll see it pop up. I
Speaker 1: have a feeling by the fall, in the two campaigns
Speaker 1: in Virginia and in New Jersey, that the issue will
Speaker 1: come up. Will it be number one issue advertised? Probably not,
Speaker 1: but it will be I think much more, much more
Speaker 1: prevalent in the campaign conversation then you're seeing it now.
Speaker 1: But it's an excellent point. There was a good column
Speaker 1: I think of the Washington Post. I think it was
Speaker 1: Paul Cain wrote a pretty smart column about this a
Speaker 1: few weeks ago about how it does seem as if
Speaker 1: for now that the issue is not top of mind
Speaker 1: for Democrats and there isn't a champion. Like I said,
Speaker 1: I just think this is somewhat temporary. I think you'll
Speaker 1: start to see you're still going to see an attempt
Speaker 1: wherever possible to get it on the ballot and be
Speaker 1: a referendum and things like that. So my guess is
Speaker 1: we're just in a lull on this issue more than
Speaker 1: anything else. I'm going to keep questions there on that
Speaker 1: because this has been a long episode. Number one, number two,
Speaker 1: it is time for everybody that listens. I want you
Speaker 1: to provide all your positive mojo because Monday night is
Speaker 1: the NBA Draft Lottery, and you've got to understand Washington
Speaker 1: d C. I know that some people may not be
Speaker 1: aware of this, but Washington DC does have an NBA franchise.
Speaker 1: It's called the Washington Wizards. A bunch of us missed
Speaker 1: the old Washington Bullets because at least the Bullets won.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to get into the change. It was
Speaker 1: named after the bullet train back in the day, the
Speaker 1: Silver Bullet Train, but the name was changed because they
Speaker 1: didn't want to have any any connection whatsoever to any
Speaker 1: form of guns on that front. But I'll be honest,
Speaker 1: none of us have ever really embraced the Wizards. It's
Speaker 1: a it's it's a it's a it's a tough you know,
Speaker 1: it's no commanders, but it's it's never been. At least
Speaker 1: it's got a literation, right. That's about all it has
Speaker 1: on that front. But if we can win the NBA
Speaker 1: Draft Lottery, we've won the Wizards have won it twice once.
Speaker 1: We we had it when Michael Jordan was running this
Speaker 1: franchise and he drafted a high school kid that didn't
Speaker 1: quite he had a good career, but it wasn't a
Speaker 1: franchise saver, Kwame Brown. And then we got it when
Speaker 1: we got John Wall. And John Wall, as my friend
Speaker 1: Tony Cohenheiger will tell you, he was good enough to
Speaker 1: get the Wizards to game six. He won Game six
Speaker 1: in a conference semifinal, and and then didn't show up
Speaker 1: for Game seven against the Celtics, and the Wizard's dream
Speaker 1: of making a conference of losing a conference final to
Speaker 1: Lebron in his last year in the Eastern Conference was
Speaker 1: denied on that front. But if the Wizards can win
Speaker 1: it Cooper Flag. They've actually been putting together to the
Speaker 1: credit of this Wizard's franchise, and they've been actually making
Speaker 1: some decent moves over the last eighteen months. They seem
Speaker 1: to be having a decent group of players that with
Speaker 1: Cooper Flag, they could be awfully interesting and a lot
Speaker 1: of fun. So all I'm asking all of your Mojo,
Speaker 1: let's you know you don't want we don't need Cooper
Speaker 1: Flag going to San Antonio. They got Wemby. We don't
Speaker 1: need Cooper Flag going at Utah. Danny Age is too
Speaker 1: smart to let that franchise languish. Okay, the Wizards need
Speaker 1: the help. They've not won fifty games. I think ever
Speaker 1: think about that. They've never won fifty games. They've won
Speaker 1: an NBA title once. They've been to two NBA Finals,
Speaker 1: but in neither year do they actually win fifty games.
Speaker 1: So I'm just asking just a little bit. I know,
Speaker 1: you may have your own team, you may have your
Speaker 1: own preference of where you want Cooper Flag to go.
Speaker 1: The Wizards could really use it, and the NBA could
Speaker 1: really use a franchise in Washington, DC that's actually successful.
Speaker 1: All right with that, Hopefully the next time we talk,
Speaker 1: Cooper Flag is about to become a Washington Wizard. Until
Speaker 1: we upload the game,