Speaker 1: I am thrilled to introduce Ryan Grimm in celebration of
Speaker 1: his book The Squad, AOC and the Hope of a
Speaker 1: Political Revolution refer to him formally as the Squad, led
Speaker 1: by Alexandria Ocazio Cortes. The group laid down a marker
Speaker 1: for an aggressive left wing agenda. Grim takes you behind
Speaker 1: the scenes as that new energy makes impact with Washington,
Speaker 1: and the Squad spends as much time fending off assaults
Speaker 1: from Donald Trump, who regularly singled them out and led
Speaker 1: chance of send them back at rallies as they did
Speaker 1: battling their own parties sclerotic leadership. As they've grown in office,
Speaker 1: they've had to contend with the eternal question that confronts
Speaker 1: outsiders whose power their way into the inside. Are they
Speaker 1: still radical organizers, willing and able to lead a political revolution?
Speaker 1: Ryan Grimm is the Intercept's DC bureau chief and the
Speaker 1: co host of Counterpoints. He was previously the Washington bureau
Speaker 1: chief for huff Post, where he led a team that
Speaker 1: won a Pulitzer Prize. He's the author of the book
Speaker 1: We've Got People from Jesse Jackson to Alexandria Ocasio Cortes
Speaker 1: and the End end of big money and the rise
Speaker 1: of a movement, and this is your country on drugs,
Speaker 1: The Secret History of Getting High in America. Grim will
Speaker 1: be joined in conversation with Crystal Ball, an American political
Speaker 1: commentator and co host of Breaking Points. She was previously
Speaker 1: a political candidate as well as a television host on MSNBC. Now,
Speaker 1: enough of my voice, please join me in welcoming Grim
Speaker 1: and Ball to the stage.
Speaker 2: Ran I think those two excerpts were a perfect way
Speaker 2: to jump off this conversation because you start with the
Speaker 2: sort of beginning of AOC's political arc, which you track
Speaker 2: with incredible insider reporting throughout the book, and also a
Speaker 2: recurring nemesis, you might say, Josh Gottthheimer, and also the
Speaker 2: influence of APAK and some of the affiliated groups. So
Speaker 2: it's a great place to start. Thank you so much
Speaker 2: for letting me be involved in this conversation. Congratulations on
Speaker 2: the book, which is fantastic, which I read cover to cover,
Speaker 2: and I encourage all of you all to do as well.
Speaker 2: I actually thought a good place to start was one
Speaker 2: of the questions that we got from you all, sort
Speaker 2: of a philosophical question about the book itself, which is
Speaker 2: is the squad, a brand or a moment. Is it
Speaker 2: something that can be nurtured and cultivated or is it
Speaker 2: more of a progressive click? In other words, what even
Speaker 2: is the squad?
Speaker 3: So I think I think the context for that The
Speaker 3: answer would be that I think all we have now
Speaker 3: are moments in the sense that we have these bursts
Speaker 3: of activity that has its own life in the real world,
Speaker 3: and then it has a second life kind of on
Speaker 3: social media, which then shapes it back in the real
Speaker 3: world and then also shapes how people understand it that
Speaker 3: goes back. We could start with like Occupy Wall Street was.
Speaker 3: It was a moment, but it was also something that
Speaker 3: changed everything that came after it. The Occupy moment is over.
Speaker 3: But and as I write about in the book, you
Speaker 3: probably don't get Bernie Sanders without the Occupy moment. But
Speaker 3: you also wouldn't have either of them if the material
Speaker 3: conditions were not there to like ripen both of those
Speaker 3: ripe in both of those things. And so black lives
Speaker 3: matter again the moment, but the moments that we live
Speaker 3: in after that are shaped by that moment. So I
Speaker 3: think on a political electoral scale, they are a moment.
Speaker 3: It was a you know, the arc of the book
Speaker 3: is kind of like mid twenty fifteen's Bernie Sanders launching
Speaker 3: his campaign up through the twenty twenty two midterms, and
Speaker 3: that's kind of the moment. I think you could kind
Speaker 3: of see it kind of cresting in twenty twenty and breaking,
Speaker 3: and then after that moment, something new is born from
Speaker 3: it that is different for it having happened. Ilan Omar
Speaker 3: told me as I was reporting this book, She's like,
Speaker 3: you know, there is no such thing as the Squad.
Speaker 3: I know that, but also there is. So there's no
Speaker 3: there's no regular meetings, there's there's no kind of criteria
Speaker 3: for membership. There was a really if people remember the
Speaker 3: Onion article from twenty nineteen I forget, which like eighty
Speaker 3: five year old New Jersey lawmaker the Onion said was
Speaker 3: like appealing for membership in the Squad, and they then
Speaker 3: jokingly said you're in, You're in. Sure, you're in. But
Speaker 3: it then becomes a so it' as ilin Omars put
Speaker 3: it was, it's a media creation, and it was created
Speaker 3: by an Instagram caption, like AOC posted a picture of
Speaker 3: the four of them and just wrote squad in the caption,
Speaker 3: and it took off. From there, So that's that's where
Speaker 3: it comes from. So it is a media creation. It's
Speaker 3: also a creation of the political moment. But then as
Speaker 3: its adversaries identify it, they forge it into a thing,
Speaker 3: and so now it's a thing, whether it wants to
Speaker 3: be a thing or not.
Speaker 2: Interesting. I mean a lot of the book there's there's
Speaker 2: several different narratives that are running, but one of them
Speaker 2: is this journey of AOC from what she thinks she
Speaker 2: is and what people project on her going in and
Speaker 2: then faced with both the reality of the job and
Speaker 2: also the reality of some of her own sort of
Speaker 2: personality traits. So talk about, you know, how she views
Speaker 2: the job in that moment where you were just reading
Speaker 2: the book, where she's occupying Speaker Pelosi's office and she's
Speaker 2: there with the activist, et cetera, to the moment where
Speaker 2: we find her now more focused on building relationships and
Speaker 2: trying to play the sort of more traditional political inside game.
Speaker 3: And what I like about that moment where they where
Speaker 3: she occupies the office and later in that in that excerpt,
Speaker 3: I quote from her from her actual speech while she's
Speaker 3: in the office, because I think it epitomizes everything so perfectly.
Speaker 3: Her whole speech while she's there is about how great
Speaker 3: Nancy Pelosi is and how much all of the climate
Speaker 3: activists are there to support Nancy Pelosi in her kind
Speaker 3: of pursuit of her climate agenda. So she really does
Speaker 3: want to be there, potentially even getting arrested occupying her office,
Speaker 3: but also as the person they're supporting her, and part
Speaker 3: of her really like it's genuine Like I contrasted a
Speaker 3: little bit with Obama, who kind of people wanted to
Speaker 3: be able to put whatever they wanted onto Obama, Whereas
Speaker 3: I think AOC genuinely feels like she can do that,
Speaker 3: Like she wants to lead a political revolution by just
Speaker 3: persuading everyone that it's the right thing to do. It's
Speaker 3: like she just she's like, well, of course, Nancy Pelosi
Speaker 3: has been for climate, for a strong climate agenda for decades.
Speaker 3: All we're doing is supporting her here. But at the
Speaker 3: same time, she also knows like she also doesn't want
Speaker 3: me occupying her office, So this is so there's this
Speaker 3: there's this tension throughout and she talks about and her
Speaker 3: staffers will also talk about how there was a kind
Speaker 3: of marriage of convenience that kind of that you couldn't
Speaker 3: see from the outside. And both she and some of
Speaker 3: the people from Just Democrats used that kind of same
Speaker 3: phrase that like, in order to become a member of Congress,
Speaker 3: like she couldn't just our system is not set up
Speaker 3: where Bartender can just win without any help from anybody else.
Speaker 3: And so there was this organization at Justice Democrat. And
Speaker 3: also nobody else could challenge Joe Crowley, like nobody within
Speaker 3: New York politics could challenge Joe Crowley. And this is
Speaker 3: a point that she would make because if they tried,
Speaker 3: their career would absolutely be over. Like that's that's what
Speaker 3: it means to have a machine. So it had to
Speaker 3: be someone from outside machine.
Speaker 2: But if you're here, didn't have a career, had to
Speaker 2: be someone who had nothing to lose.
Speaker 3: To lose absolutely, And this organization Justice Democrats had launched.
Speaker 3: Kyle Kolinski actually helped launch them.
Speaker 2: I was aware of that.
Speaker 3: They flew out of They out and grew out of
Speaker 3: brand new Congress, which had tried to elect four hundred
Speaker 3: and thirty five kind of populist to Congress. That was
Speaker 3: their goal. By the end of the year, they realize
Speaker 3: they're on the brink of electing zero and In the meantime,
Speaker 3: they had split into Justice Democrats, which worked on the
Speaker 3: Democratic side, and brand new Congress was stuck with the
Speaker 3: original thing of doing candidates in every primary note regardless
Speaker 3: of the party, and so when they realized that they
Speaker 3: might get zero, they then put all their resources into AOC.
Speaker 3: So when she then wins, the people that she knows
Speaker 3: are the people that supported her. She can't she beat
Speaker 3: Joe Crowley. Going to work for her at that point
Speaker 3: in the Democratic Party would have been career suicide, and
Speaker 3: so it was very hard for her to find people
Speaker 3: from inside the party so that brings them together and
Speaker 3: create But from the outside it looked like it was
Speaker 3: this kind of revolutionary vanguard that had been well organized
Speaker 3: and kind of powered its way through, when in fact
Speaker 3: the four members didn't really know each other right and
Speaker 3: were there just kind of it was a coincidence that
Speaker 3: they all arrived on the same themes at the same time,
Speaker 3: and then they're expected to work together as this media
Speaker 3: creation and then immediately their hit starting in January with
Speaker 3: the constant question are you anti Semitic for not kind
Speaker 3: of kind of condemning ilhan Omar or for the Benjamin situation,
Speaker 3: and all like the first six months just consumed by
Speaker 3: attacks from APAK and its allied organizations.
Speaker 2: I want to pick up more on that piece in
Speaker 2: a moment, because one of the things that you and
Speaker 2: I have talked about is how much that theme runs
Speaker 2: through the book and how influential those organizations and the
Speaker 2: funding of those organizations and the funding of in primaries
Speaker 2: ended up shaping, you know, the Democratic Caucus and their
Speaker 2: response to what's happening right now in Gaza. So I
Speaker 2: want to come back to that. But I thought this
Speaker 2: was a really good question as well. That gets to
Speaker 2: some of the heart of the critique that the left
Speaker 2: has had of the squad. The question here is why
Speaker 2: haven't the progressives hijacked the Democratic Party in the manner
Speaker 2: of the Freedom Caucus, especially considering the comparably slim majorities
Speaker 2: of the one hundred and seventeenth one hundred and eighteenth Congresses,
Speaker 2: asked Jonathan.
Speaker 3: So partly you have to think about well, partly, Democrats
Speaker 3: are just different, and they're always going to be different.
Speaker 3: Like when you tell if you tell the Freedom Caucus, look,
Speaker 3: if you don't support this thing, the government's going to
Speaker 3: shut down, or if you don't support this thing, we're
Speaker 3: going to have a global financial crisis and we're going
Speaker 3: to default on the debt. Their claim of being okay
Speaker 3: with that is quite credible, like, all right, fine, go ahead,
Speaker 3: do it without me. Then. So Democrats have always had
Speaker 3: that had some of that problem because they you can
Speaker 3: always come back and say, well, all right, here, we're
Speaker 3: giving you this, and it's so easy to whittle them away.
Speaker 3: So that's the kind of that's one that's one structural
Speaker 3: problem that they have. But then just if you think
Speaker 3: about the timing when they came in Donald Trump as president,
Speaker 3: and so they it's not as if they're going to
Speaker 3: kind of hold up legislation and get a Democratic president
Speaker 3: to sign it into office. That only that only comes later.
Speaker 3: And so their first six months they're really in this
Speaker 3: kind of two front war, one with with Apak, which
Speaker 3: is keeping them on their heels and kind of making
Speaker 3: it harder for them to kind of organize a kind
Speaker 3: of offensive, forward thinking strategy because it's just every single
Speaker 3: week it's just they're playing playing defense. But then also
Speaker 3: this constant battle with with Nancy Pelosi, which is which
Speaker 3: breaks out into the press and ultimately ends with a
Speaker 3: couple of the staffers being pushed out of the office
Speaker 3: and things really shifting around. So then soon after that
Speaker 3: the presidential campaign picks up. And so at that point
Speaker 3: the squad three of whom endorse Bernie Sanders. Iona Presley
Speaker 3: with her eye on Massachusetts politics and a potential Senate seat.
Speaker 3: She's like, oh, Elizabeth Warren getting a nomination a Senate
Speaker 3: seat opening up. Yes, I endorsed the LILI form. So
Speaker 3: three of them endorse Bernie Sanders, and they really believe
Speaker 3: that he can win the nomination. He comes within hair's
Speaker 3: breath of winning that nomination. Democratic primary voters are much
Speaker 3: more affectionate toward the Democratic Party than Republican primary voters are, Like,
Speaker 3: if you watch Republican primary ads, they're all kind of
Speaker 3: running against the Republican Party. Like, to them, the Republican
Speaker 3: Party is just as bad as the other elites. And
Speaker 3: whereas the Democratic Party. If you're considered not a good
Speaker 3: democh like happened to Nina Turner and her special election,
Speaker 3: then a lot of kind of normal Democratic primary voters
Speaker 3: are going to reject you. So Bernie Sanders running as
Speaker 3: an independent Democratic socialists who caucus with Democrats had that
Speaker 3: uphill climb and so you had he and the squad
Speaker 3: constantly trying to assure Democratic primary voters like, we're not
Speaker 3: radical like and you know, he gave that speech, I'm
Speaker 3: just running on the legacy of FDR. And so if
Speaker 3: you're trying to convince the Democratic Party that you're you're
Speaker 3: good Democrats, you're just a lot more kind of democratic socialists,
Speaker 3: and you just want kind of higher minium wage, you
Speaker 3: want Medicare for all, you want a Green New Deal,
Speaker 3: but you're you're a Democrat, then that makes it harder
Speaker 3: at that point, and that's where you hear some of
Speaker 3: the stuff that she'll get criticized for. She when she said, uh,
Speaker 3: I think she called Pelosi Mama Bear at one point.
Speaker 3: People have never forgiven her for that. That was while
Speaker 3: Bernie was well, it looked like Bernie might win the nomination,
Speaker 3: and she's trying to win the kind of noormy Democrats
Speaker 3: over into the camp to say no, no, no, we're
Speaker 3: the water's fine, we're not threatening, we're not dangerous. And
Speaker 3: then of course he within within three days there's that
Speaker 3: massive turnaround and it all all collapses. So then twenty
Speaker 3: twenty one becomes their opportunity and they did then, and
Speaker 3: I have some interesting examples of it in the book,
Speaker 3: particularly around the American Rescue Plan. They there was so
Speaker 3: much outside pressure and anger about particularly the fifteen dollars
Speaker 3: minimum wage not being kept in the legislation that when
Speaker 3: Mansion came back and tried to pull a lot of
Speaker 3: the unemployment benefits out, Schumer went over to the House
Speaker 3: and said, look, Mansion's not with us unless we do
Speaker 3: these massive cuts to unemployment benefits. And Primila Giapaulic, Congressional
Speaker 3: Progressive Caucus Chair, was able to tell Schumer, if he
Speaker 3: does that, it's like, you know, I'm fine with it.
Speaker 3: You know, I mean, I'm not fine with it, but
Speaker 3: you know, don't worry about me. I'm still with with you.
Speaker 3: But you're going to lose the squad and it's going
Speaker 3: to go down. And because there was so much outside
Speaker 3: pressure and anger, that was a credible threat, and Mansion
Speaker 3: caved on it and this and hundreds of billions and
Speaker 3: unemployment benefits went through. So there were moments where it
Speaker 3: could happen, but it was but it was never done
Speaker 3: in a way that kind of made kind of the
Speaker 3: outside folks happen because they still didn't get the fifteen
Speaker 3: dollars minum wage. So from the outside you were still
Speaker 3: like frustrated about it.
Speaker 2: What does AOC think of these critiques, That's.
Speaker 3: A that's a good question. I mean, she's answered some
Speaker 3: of them in some interviews. I think she thinks a
Speaker 3: lot of them are unfair, that a lot of them
Speaker 3: are people who are making kind of bad faith arguments
Speaker 3: kind of to feed algorithms and like get for clicks basically,
Speaker 3: And I think she I think she thinks some people
Speaker 3: just don't kind of understand like what she's dealing with
Speaker 3: on the inside, what it's like to be an inside,
Speaker 3: inside legislator. But I think also I think she thinks
Speaker 3: some of it is fair that and but there also
Speaker 3: is there's no coordinating mechanism, and she has talked about
Speaker 3: this as well. That say, back in the nineteen sixties,
Speaker 3: you had major mass organizations that had steering committees that
Speaker 3: were in contact with each other, that were setting ambitious
Speaker 3: strategies and tactics and then executing them and had the
Speaker 3: manpower to do it. You know, they had the grassroots
Speaker 3: kind of mobilization to do it. That doesn't exist now,
Speaker 3: Like what has replaced that is basically Twitter and Twitter
Speaker 3: is reactive, so Twitter usually can give feedback to legislators
Speaker 3: after it's too.
Speaker 2: Late, right after they've done something that people are unhappy about.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and didn't and wouldn't have known. Why why did
Speaker 3: you do this thing? Now at that point it's too late. Yeah, gotcha.
Speaker 2: We got a couple questions in this regard. But you know,
Speaker 2: you track how AOC she gets elected. She's instantly I
Speaker 2: remember watching she was then on Morning Joe and suddenly
Speaker 2: everyone's like, oh my god, who is this person? And
Speaker 2: she's instant media star and getting you know, all of
Speaker 2: these this interest in social media followers and mainstream press
Speaker 2: really excited about it, and she's kind of knocking it
Speaker 2: out of the park. Interview after interview, and then she
Speaker 2: sits down for one interview and gets asked about Israel
Speaker 2: and Palestine, And that's your jumping off point to talk
Speaker 2: about the way that that conflict has both been a
Speaker 2: difficulty a challenge for members of the Squad and sort
Speaker 2: of the Squad adjacent members as well, but also how strangely,
Speaker 2: because there was so much organization on the other side
Speaker 2: trying to enforce unanimity on the topic, it actually strengthened
Speaker 2: their spine in terms of their position. Talk about a
Speaker 2: little bit about that, starting with that moment with AOC,
Speaker 2: which is incredible.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it's so it's it started really with the
Speaker 3: Great March of Return, which people have a lot of
Speaker 3: people missed it happening in real time, but now with
Speaker 3: the war going on currently, people have looked back and said, oh,
Speaker 3: that that that wasn't that was an interesting development. If
Speaker 3: you don't know what the Great March Return was. That
Speaker 3: was a civil society led initiative in Gaza that kind
Speaker 3: of came from the grassroots where people would say, every Friday,
Speaker 3: we're going to go near the fence and we're gonna
Speaker 3: we're gonna picnic. It's gonna be a joyous thing. And
Speaker 3: then we're gonna march non violently to the to the
Speaker 3: fence and we just do this every Friday, just and
Speaker 3: we're gonna look out at the places where our parents
Speaker 3: and grandparents used to live. This will be a fun
Speaker 3: community event, but also symbolic of our our hope that
Speaker 3: one day there will be peace and we can return.
Speaker 3: And the Israeli troops started shooting and every so every
Speaker 3: Friday they'd started shooting, and it became this uh kind
Speaker 3: of infamous thing since then where eventually they started shooting,
Speaker 3: they started aiming for legs, and so it created then
Speaker 3: they shot out so many people's legs that in Gaza,
Speaker 3: you'd have it just became a very regular thing to
Speaker 3: see people going around with, you know, missing one or
Speaker 3: both legs. Of the number, the un has the numbers,
Speaker 3: but they're they're astronomical. And so after one of these
Speaker 3: mass shootings, I sixty people were killed and these are
Speaker 3: non violent. You know, there's some stone throwing and but
Speaker 3: you know, generally there's there's not kind of Hamas led actions.
Speaker 3: Hamas eventually reluctantly supported them, but they had but there
Speaker 3: was nothing armed about them. And so AOC spoted on
Speaker 3: Twitter saying, it's appalling that sixty non violent protesters were
Speaker 3: killed in this Gaza demonstration, and it's appalling that there's
Speaker 3: so much silence from so many here in New York
Speaker 3: City about that. And that created a lot of interest
Speaker 3: in this congressional candidate from the Bronx and from Queens
Speaker 3: who's standing up for the rights of Palestinian because it
Speaker 3: was so unusual, and so she then gets asked about
Speaker 3: that question on this in this interview, and she's been
Speaker 3: nailing kind of interview after interview, and it initially it
Speaker 3: seemed like the biggest event that the night that she
Speaker 3: won her primary was Joe Crowley losing. It very quickly
Speaker 3: became clear after as she was nailing all these interviews
Speaker 3: that the biggest event was actually her winning, and that
Speaker 3: Joe Crowley would be somebody who was like a trivia
Speaker 3: question a couple of years later, did anybody know what
Speaker 3: he's doing? He's a lot lobbyist, right, he had to
Speaker 3: be Yes, he's a lobbyist. And so she's so she's
Speaker 3: doing great, all of these interesting and then she gets
Speaker 3: hit with this question and Margaret Carlson says, you use
Speaker 3: the word Palestine, what do you mean by that? And
Speaker 3: you can see her whole demeanor change where she's sort
Speaker 3: of like, I know that there are third rails everywhere
Speaker 3: on this issue, and I might have touched one a night,
Speaker 3: but I don't know if I did or not. And
Speaker 3: she sort of tries to explain, she's just saying that
Speaker 3: she sees it if sixty people were killed at a
Speaker 3: protest in Puerto Rico, or sixty people were killed at
Speaker 3: protest in Ferguson, I would stand up for that, and
Speaker 3: so I stand up for it when it happens in
Speaker 3: Gaza as well. And she's like, yes, but you use
Speaker 3: the word occupation. What do you mean by that? And
Speaker 3: again you see like, oh God, what's happening here. It's
Speaker 3: finally she says, look, I'm not a geopolitical expert. This
Speaker 3: wasn't something that we talked about a lot at my
Speaker 3: Bronx dinner table growing up, which Summer Lead later told
Speaker 3: me this same thing just growing up in Pittsburgh. It's
Speaker 3: that's not an issue that you're steeped you're steeped in
Speaker 3: if you're growing up in the African American community in Pittsburgh.
Speaker 3: And so she just at that point they kind of
Speaker 3: pull her off the trail and she realized, I need
Speaker 3: to start need to learn more about this, because clearly
Speaker 3: this is going to be a very big issue. And
Speaker 3: I think once you once you're kind of pressed to
Speaker 3: look into the history and to look into the reality,
Speaker 3: you're probably going to get pushed in the direction of
Speaker 3: saying that this this is wrong. Jamal Bowman did an
Speaker 3: interesting interview recently kind of who became one of the
Speaker 3: you know, either the fifth or sixth squad member who
Speaker 3: talked about his experience of visiting the West Bank and bizarrely,
Speaker 3: there are people who on the left who are angry
Speaker 3: that he even took that trip, But everybody who takes
Speaker 3: that trip and sees the West Bank in person kind
Speaker 3: of comes back changed because there are streets that you
Speaker 3: can't walk down if you're Palestinian. There are there are
Speaker 3: front doors of Palestinian homes that are like sealed shut,
Speaker 3: like they have to go out their back door, only
Speaker 3: like they can't go out through this street. Different so
Speaker 3: you know, different streets are blocked off for people with
Speaker 3: different license plates. And you and you see this up
Speaker 3: front of you, like this is this is wrong? It
Speaker 3: just it just feel it just feels wrong. And so
Speaker 3: I think that over the years as they've learned more
Speaker 3: about the issue. Now obviously Omar until he didn't need
Speaker 3: that education, but also as they as they realize that
Speaker 3: this is this is going to be much bigger than
Speaker 3: I thought it was, like one of the Kyle Kyle
Speaker 3: would vouch for this too well. Will Lead Scheids, who
Speaker 3: also helped launch Justice Democrats, said he always gets asked,
Speaker 3: why do you guys focus on Israel Palestine so much.
Speaker 3: He's like, we don't We're just always getting hit on it,
Speaker 3: so we have to respond.
Speaker 2: So one of the questions that we got from the
Speaker 2: audience was, in your opinion, what is the reason that
Speaker 2: the Israel lobbying infrastructure has been so successful at enforcing
Speaker 2: narrative discipline? And I might add as a corollary, what
Speaker 2: happened to John Fetterman?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, So the John Fetterman story is in the book.
Speaker 3: It's part of and this is kind of an answer
Speaker 3: to the question. So in twenty nineteen, in direct response
Speaker 3: to Omar Untilib getting sworn in, the group Democratic Majority
Speaker 3: for Israel gets founded, and they're pretty explicit that that
Speaker 3: was the thing that they were founded to push back against.
Speaker 3: The first money they spent was later that year against
Speaker 3: Bernie Sanders in the presidential campaign. That was their kind
Speaker 3: of foray into it. Their first huge effort was trying
Speaker 3: to stop Jamal Bowman from unseating the head of the
Speaker 3: Foreign Affairs Committee, Elliott Angel, one of the most tawkish,
Speaker 3: unapologetic defenders of Israel in Congress, and the idea that
Speaker 3: he could that he could be beaten by a former
Speaker 3: principle nobody backed by Justice Democrats was unthinkable, and so
Speaker 3: DMFI spent two million dollars plus in this primary, but
Speaker 3: he still ended up losing, even lost in heavily Jewish precincts,
Speaker 3: and so it ended up being a blowout, something like
Speaker 3: something like fifteen points. And in the wake of that, DMFI,
Speaker 3: which was kind of an offshoot of a pack and APAC, realized, okay,
Speaker 3: we need to this. Two million dollars is not going
Speaker 3: to cut it, Like, we need to come in here
Speaker 3: with some serious money. And so in the next cycle,
Speaker 3: the twenty twenty two cycle, DMFI again came up with
Speaker 3: something like ten million dollars so to spend. Some affiliated
Speaker 3: groups came up with another couple of million, but a PAC
Speaker 3: launched its own own super pac, which was new in
Speaker 3: its history. It had always been purely a brick grassroots
Speaker 3: organization with chapters and sub chapters all over the country,
Speaker 3: and they launched the United Democracy Projects superPAC, which they
Speaker 3: put more than thirty million dollars into and put almost
Speaker 3: every penny of it into democratic primaries trying to knock
Speaker 3: out progressive incumbents or to stop progressive challengers from winning primaries.
Speaker 3: And that's just an absolutely enormous amount of money. Like
Speaker 3: the organization j Street, which was set up to be
Speaker 3: a counter to APAK, told me that they had seen
Speaker 3: what happened in twenty twenty, and so then they organized
Speaker 3: their own super pac to try to defend progressive candidates
Speaker 3: who they felt were strong on Israel. That they felt
Speaker 3: the argument that APAC is pro Israel as a misnomer,
Speaker 3: that Apak is actually leading Israel in a direction that's
Speaker 3: not only going to be harmful for the Palestinians but
Speaker 3: also for Israel. And so Jay Street was able to
Speaker 3: raise about two million dollars, so they thought the MFI
Speaker 3: will have ten million, will have two million. The mfi's
Speaker 3: positions are extremely unpopular and so they have to spend
Speaker 3: much more money in primaries to overcome that. So at
Speaker 3: a five to one disadvantage, we can, you know, we
Speaker 3: can hold we can hold our own. Then when APAC
Speaker 3: comes in with thirty or forty million, they're just able
Speaker 3: to annihilate people. They spent There may be some former
Speaker 3: constituents of Donna Edwards here. They spent I think seven
Speaker 3: million dollars to make sure that Donna Edwards did not
Speaker 3: get back into Congress. Like a third. She's like a
Speaker 3: thirty point lead. Popular former Democrat. She had voted. They
Speaker 3: didn't like a particular vote she took in two thousand
Speaker 3: and eight on the war in Gaza. Wow and wow,
Speaker 3: seven million dollars later she was she was beaten Nita Alam,
Speaker 3: who was her her good friends. I don't know if
Speaker 3: people remember. There was this horrific and became a national story,
Speaker 3: a hate crime in Chapel Hill, Durham, that area where
Speaker 3: three Muslim students were killed and she was good friends
Speaker 3: with them. She became the first Muslim county commissioner in Durham.
Speaker 3: She was running for Congress and was expected to win.
Speaker 3: It was popular with a lot of the Democratic voters
Speaker 3: in there. They spent something like five or six million
Speaker 3: like to stop her from winning. Candidates around the country
Speaker 3: started seeing this, and so there would be consultant calls.
Speaker 3: They'd say, Okay, how do we stop this money from
Speaker 3: coming in? We can't raise enough to compete against it,
Speaker 3: but how do we stop it? Say? Well, one direct
Speaker 3: way to stop it is just to ask them how
Speaker 3: we can stop it. And so that's what Fetterman did.
Speaker 3: So Fetterman's campaign reached out to DMFI. At the time,
Speaker 3: Fetterman was running against a concern vative Democrat named Connor Lamb,
Speaker 3: who was his campaign was openly sending out memos saying,
Speaker 3: if we get super PAC support, here is how we
Speaker 3: can beat John Fetterman. If we do not get super
Speaker 3: PAC support, we will lose and Democrats are going to
Speaker 3: lose this seat and it's going to be a disaster.
Speaker 3: Like they were very explicitly making this point, going on
Speaker 3: TV and circulating the memos to the meeting. We need
Speaker 3: super PAC money. We can't beat him without super PAC money.
Speaker 3: And the super Pac money they're talking about is DMFI
Speaker 3: for the most part, and Mainstream Democrats, which is a
Speaker 3: Mainstream Democrats pact is allied funded by Reid Hoffen, but
Speaker 3: allied with DMFI. So they go directly to the MFI
Speaker 3: and say what does our Israel Palace dine position need
Speaker 3: to be basically, and Mark Melman, the head of DMFI
Speaker 3: later told later said on the record that the meeting
Speaker 3: went very well that Fetterman's staff then sent over their
Speaker 3: Israel Palace time platform. It was pretty good, not quite there,
Speaker 3: so they d some edits, kicked it back to the
Speaker 3: campaign campaign checked said this is good posted it. This
Speaker 3: is our position, and Connor lamb out of luck, We're
Speaker 3: not gonna We're not going to support you because this
Speaker 3: guy's this guy's good enough. And you saw that happen
Speaker 3: in a lot of different races that candidates who hoped
Speaker 3: they were going to get a pack support to beat
Speaker 3: a progressive didn't because the progressive was able to persuade
Speaker 3: APAC and DMFI that they were that they had sufficiently
Speaker 3: switched their position on the issue.
Speaker 2: Wow. And you also have the story of Summer Lee
Speaker 2: who had sent out some pretty mild tweets but knew
Speaker 2: she was going to be a target and just sort
Speaker 2: of accepted it and was able narrowly to still win
Speaker 2: her race. You know, there were two reports of candidates
Speaker 2: who are running right now in the Democratic primary for
Speaker 2: Senate in Michigan, both of whom were reportedly, according to them,
Speaker 2: offered twenty million dollars to drop out of the Senate
Speaker 2: race to prime I'm marry Rashida to leab. I mean,
Speaker 2: that's like as naked as it gets, a donor calling
Speaker 2: you up. This is not even legal, by the way
Speaker 2: to do, but a donor call you up and saying, hey,
Speaker 2: I'll give you twenty million dollars in your primary campaign
Speaker 2: against Rashida to leave if you drop out here based
Speaker 2: on your reporting and your knowledge of how all of
Speaker 2: this has gone down in the past, I mean you
Speaker 2: surprised by just the brazen nature of.
Speaker 3: That, not really, because it has taken Citizens United some
Speaker 3: time to kind of blossom into what it really could
Speaker 3: become and what people could see that it could become
Speaker 3: from the beginning, which is just the floodgates completely open
Speaker 3: the first the first cycle twenty twelve, there were a
Speaker 3: couple Senate candidates that got involved with super packs, but
Speaker 3: very few. It only started drifting into house races a
Speaker 3: couple cycles after that. But twenty twenty two, an apax
Speaker 3: spending of the thirty plus million dollars kind of really
Speaker 3: really changed, I think the calculation because that is, on
Speaker 3: the one hand, so much money that it can reshape
Speaker 3: how the party positions itself on Israel Palestine, it can
Speaker 3: purge like an entire faction of critics from the party,
Speaker 3: but it's also not much money, Like there is a
Speaker 3: small number of donors the super Pac. Now there's you know,
Speaker 3: a lot of apax money is dark money that goes
Speaker 3: for kind of general operations, but the super Pac money
Speaker 3: is public and you can see this person gave five million,
Speaker 3: this person gave one million, this person gave one million,
Speaker 3: and then you'll see like on a single day and
Speaker 3: you can look at the FEC reports on it, on
Speaker 3: a single day, thirty different people gave one hundred thousands.
Speaker 3: You're like, oh, must have been a nice fundraiser somewhere.
Speaker 3: And so it only takes a few people spending a
Speaker 3: small amount of money to them, right, like they it's
Speaker 3: an a rounding error to them. And once you can
Speaker 3: see you can have an impact, then you're like, oh, well,
Speaker 3: let's let's do this again. And I think they one
Speaker 3: miss kind of mistake they feel like they made is
Speaker 3: they did not spend heavily against Ilhan Omar, like they
Speaker 3: felt like she was comfortably ahead in the race and
Speaker 3: that it was going to be a waste of money,
Speaker 3: and also that she in this I get into this
Speaker 3: in the book she and Pelosi had a very close relationship,
Speaker 3: which might surprise a lot of people, and so they
Speaker 3: would have been going against Pelosi to go after Omar.
Speaker 3: She ended up only winning by a couple points, and
Speaker 3: so now she's facing the same person, and I don't
Speaker 3: think they'll they'll make that mistake again, like they're gonna,
Speaker 3: I think, to leave and we can get into we
Speaker 3: could go race by race, but they they feel like
Speaker 3: there's enough shot at winning and it's a it's cheap
Speaker 3: enough that why not.
Speaker 2: That they may as well? Do you give it their
Speaker 2: One of the questions we got from the audience is
Speaker 2: with the Squad members vocally calling for a ceasefire and
Speaker 2: really leading the charge on that and challenging Democratic leadership,
Speaker 2: does this prove the electing progressives inside the Democratic Party
Speaker 2: is not a fool's Errand I don't have to tell
Speaker 2: you that. You know, there's a lot of progressive and
Speaker 2: lefty disenchantment with electoral politics, disappointments with the Squad's unwillingness
Speaker 2: and inability at times to challenge Democratic leadership directly. I
Speaker 2: have never seen them be as forceful in critique of
Speaker 2: Democratic leadership and especially President Biden as they have been
Speaker 2: in this moment with Israel's you know, all out war
Speaker 2: being waged on Gaza. So what do you think of
Speaker 2: this person's question? Do you think it proves that this
Speaker 2: was worthwhile? And what are some of the factors that
Speaker 2: led them to be so strong on this particular issue.
Speaker 3: So the structure that makes it, that made it so
Speaker 3: difficult for so many years for progressives to get into
Speaker 3: office was just the lack of resources. And Bernie Sander
Speaker 3: well Elizabeth Warren kind of in her twenty twelve Senate
Speaker 3: campaign burnt you can read my last book for this,
Speaker 3: and Howard Dean with his first presidential campaign really kind
Speaker 3: of bringing small donors into the game. Obama kind of
Speaker 3: showing that you can do it on a national scale
Speaker 3: in two thousand and eight with small donors, obviously combining
Speaker 3: it with a lot of Wall Street and other big
Speaker 3: donor money. That opens up the possibility for outsiders without
Speaker 3: without money to then come in and challenge. Since then,
Speaker 3: you've seen some co opting of that by the Democratic
Speaker 3: Party more broadly. I'm sure everybody here has their inbox
Speaker 3: completely carpet bombed with messages saying that the world's going
Speaker 3: to end if those those are the nicest ones. The
Speaker 3: others kind of look like phone bills or something, So,
Speaker 3: you know, taking something that that ought to be a
Speaker 3: beautiful thing, you know, democratizing the process, bringing people in
Speaker 3: and then allowing candidates to take positions based on what
Speaker 3: people want rather than what their donors are demanding, gets
Speaker 3: then contorted by consultants who then own the kind of
Speaker 3: big emailing firm, so then blast your inbox. So that
Speaker 3: that coupled with the fact that you can't really scale
Speaker 3: the squad in the sense that one reason that AOC
Speaker 3: can raise ten million dollars every cycle is that she's AOC.
Speaker 3: But she's AOC because other people aren't. You can't have
Speaker 3: two hundred and fifty people like that. It's just like
Speaker 3: there is a limited amount of kind of stardom that's
Speaker 3: the definition of stardom. And so but it has built,
Speaker 3: and in collaboration with the kind of Sanders ecosism, built
Speaker 3: at least an ecosystem that is there and can be
Speaker 3: and can be triggered when when the moments arise. And
Speaker 3: so this moment is an example of that where you know,
Speaker 3: if you didn't have them in office, now you know
Speaker 3: where where would the pressure have come from on, you know,
Speaker 3: from within the Democratic Party. And so it's it's not
Speaker 3: it's not I don't think it's ever worth giving up.
Speaker 3: But there are the challenges. This system is very adaptable
Speaker 3: and the challenges are just going to keep replicating.
Speaker 2: One of the things that you document in this book
Speaker 2: as well is, obviously you know, if you're going to
Speaker 2: accomplish change, you need allies who have power, like the Squad,
Speaker 2: and you also need outside groups that are going to
Speaker 2: pressure put pressure on those in power and be in
Speaker 2: the right place when legislation is being crafted. However, just
Speaker 2: at the moment when you know you had a democratic
Speaker 2: trifecta and progressives really needed to be flexing their muscles,
Speaker 2: a lot of these organizations were eaten up by sort
Speaker 2: of internal turmoil. And I've got a quote from you
Speaker 2: from the book about what was going on within these organizations.
Speaker 2: You say, a sense of powerlessness on the left had
Speaker 2: nudged the focus away from structural or wide reaching change
Speaker 2: which felt hopelessly beyond reach, and replaced it with an
Speaker 2: internal target that was more achievable. One former executive director
Speaker 2: of a major nonprofit advocacy group told me he saw
Speaker 2: those in his organizations turn inward out of desperation. Maybe
Speaker 2: I can't end racism myself, but I can get my
Speaker 2: manager fired, or I can get so and so removed,
Speaker 2: or I can hold somebody accountable you relate. People found
Speaker 2: power where they could and often that's where you work,
Speaker 2: sometimes where you live or where you study, but someplace
Speaker 2: close to home. How did this dynamic play out over
Speaker 2: the years that you're covering here, and how did it
Speaker 2: intersect with progressive goals getting accomplished through the House and
Speaker 2: with this White House.
Speaker 3: Yeah. What one interesting example that I have in the
Speaker 3: book is actually the Sunrise Movement itself, and the Sunrise
Speaker 3: Movement is one of the few organizations that endorsed AOC,
Speaker 3: and I think every member of the squad. They were
Speaker 3: an obscure group at that point. They were an obscure
Speaker 3: group when they occupied Pelosi's office, but it was that
Speaker 3: moment was so electric that it kind of it allowed
Speaker 3: them to eclipse every other green group in Washington and
Speaker 3: become these stars. And you then had almost every Democratic
Speaker 3: president presidential candidate endorse a Green New Deal. Even Joe
Speaker 3: Biden's climate platform was arguably like to the left of
Speaker 3: Bernie's from twenty sixteen. Like that's how far things had gone. Varshne,
Speaker 3: the head of Sunrise, was put with AOC on the
Speaker 3: like six person task force assigned to with John Kerrey
Speaker 3: to design the Biden climate agenda, and Sunrise had this
Speaker 3: direct line to Ron Klain, who was the White House
Speaker 3: Chief of Staff, who very much believed that and better
Speaker 3: for worse, and whether it's right or wrong, that Sunrise
Speaker 3: represented a real youth movement and that their input was
Speaker 3: important and that winning them over meant keeping together the
Speaker 3: coalition that would be needed in the to pass legislation
Speaker 3: to hold the House and Senate to win reelection. And
Speaker 3: so Sunrise found itself in this unique and surprising position
Speaker 3: to them where they were constantly able to like shape
Speaker 3: legislation as it was being crafted before it was even
Speaker 3: sent over to the Senator House, which is in many
Speaker 3: ways like a more important place to be in the beginning,
Speaker 3: because the product that starts, you know, goes over to
Speaker 3: Congress and then people push it to the left or
Speaker 3: push it to the right, but where it starts dictates
Speaker 3: like ninety percent of where it's gonna end up. And
Speaker 3: so they're right there in the beginning shaping it, and
Speaker 3: it right at that point, Uh, the organization just implodes
Speaker 3: over internal internal strife that it had. It was like
Speaker 3: the maybe sixth near implosion there had been you know, Uh,
Speaker 3: there have been tussles over mostly over kind of uh
Speaker 3: wages and white supremacy would be the would be the buckets,
Speaker 3: and they'd be tossed in together. But they had been
Speaker 3: suppressed first by you know, we're doing the Green New Deal,
Speaker 3: We're doing Bernie Sanders. Uh, you know, we're we're pushing
Speaker 3: this agenda. But once Biden gets into office, and this
Speaker 3: was this became true for a lot of other progressive
Speaker 3: organizations there. There there was a lack of kind of
Speaker 3: faith in a direction, and so there and so those
Speaker 3: pressures that had been suppressed before kind of burst burst through.
Speaker 3: And so I talked to the political director of Sunrise
Speaker 3: who was in who said that right at this moment
Speaker 3: of maximal kind of influence, it turned out fifty percent
Speaker 3: or more of his time instead was directed toward like
Speaker 3: zoom meetings sorting out all the different issues that they
Speaker 3: were having back in Sunrise. And he was like, and
Speaker 3: has he put it? You know, if I'm not there either,
Speaker 3: the Biden White House is just writing its own agenda,
Speaker 3: which you don't necessarily want to leave them to that
Speaker 3: or some big green groups around there, or oil and
Speaker 3: gas groups are in there. And so that's one example,
Speaker 3: but there are others in the way that the thing
Speaker 3: just kind of falls apart.
Speaker 2: We did get a really important question about your performance
Speaker 2: in the Eastern shore Boat Docking competition, but I will
Speaker 2: put that one to the side. I'll let you comment
Speaker 2: on that separately.
Speaker 3: That's a fourth of July event in rock Hall, Maryland,
Speaker 3: So whoever asked that can ask it afterwards while I'm
Speaker 3: signing their book.
Speaker 2: One quick question for you. There's a lot of Joe
Speaker 2: Mansion in the book, and there's a lot of No
Speaker 2: Labels speaking of big money and the influence on politics
Speaker 2: and all of that also in the book. And obviously
Speaker 2: Joe Mansion just announced he's not running for Senate again,
Speaker 2: and there's a lot of speculation that he might try
Speaker 2: to run for president on No Labels. Take you have
Speaker 2: any insight into whether that is real.
Speaker 3: It has been surreal to watch all of these threads
Speaker 3: of this book kind of burst into like full public view.
Speaker 3: Like I thought when I was writing it, are people
Speaker 3: going to think I'm crazy for focusing this much on
Speaker 3: Apex influence on the squad and those around them? Are
Speaker 3: people gonna think I'm crazy for like chapters on the
Speaker 3: money behind No Labels and Joe Manchin and Josh Gottheimer
Speaker 3: is a basically the founder of No Labels because covering
Speaker 3: this stuff every single day, I saw how kind of
Speaker 3: determinative this money was, not just influential, but just completely
Speaker 3: driving things. And so I even though people, even though
Speaker 3: this isn't the thing that gets into the news like this,
Speaker 3: it has these have to be major themes of the book.
Speaker 3: Now sure, sure enough, Yeah, Nancy Jacobson and Mark Penner
Speaker 3: are looking to raise yeah what or they say they
Speaker 3: claim they have raised seventy million dollars to get Joe
Speaker 3: Manchen or whoever they can convince to be on their
Speaker 3: ticket in an effort that would you know, the only
Speaker 3: way you can put it is it would help Trump
Speaker 3: get re elected. Like that's there's no other way to
Speaker 3: see that. Like some some of the weird ones like RFK,
Speaker 3: you're like, I don't know how that plays out, But
Speaker 3: No Labels, that's this, that's pretty clear. That's purely a
Speaker 3: play that's gonna hurt Democrats and help Republicans, and that
Speaker 3: that that Gotttheimer and Mansion are are able to like
Speaker 3: participate in that so actively yet be held up as
Speaker 3: kind of these kind of paragons of democratic virtue. Well,
Speaker 3: how folks like the Squad who are who are constantly
Speaker 3: bending over backwards against the wishes sometimes of their own
Speaker 3: base to support the Democratic Party are constantly being told
Speaker 3: that they're not good enough Democrats. Is the kind of
Speaker 3: the contradiction that runs through the book.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, Well, the last question for you will wrap
Speaker 2: things up on this one. We started off talking about
Speaker 2: the Squad as a moment. Is that moment over? And
Speaker 2: what do you think? You know, what do you think
Speaker 2: it looks like going forward? What do you think that
Speaker 2: the sort of state of the progressive movement is at
Speaker 2: this time?
Speaker 3: I mean, I think the moment is over in the
Speaker 3: sense that that's what it was, But we're in the
Speaker 3: kind of post Bernie, post Squad moment now that is
Speaker 3: that is still that is still being shaped. I think
Speaker 3: it will be significantly shaped by the Democratic Party's response
Speaker 3: to the war in Gaza, and that is ongoing. And
Speaker 3: I fear that we're looking at the beginning like that,
Speaker 3: as horrible as it is, like that, we might be
Speaker 3: only at the beginning because the the disease has has
Speaker 3: set in, but it hasn't kind of taken over. When
Speaker 3: you have destroyed that not just the healthcare system, but
Speaker 3: the sewage treatment system. You know, people talked about how
Speaker 3: awful fire festival was because they didn't didn't have sewage
Speaker 3: treatment for like two days or something. You know, this
Speaker 3: is endless, and so I think some of it will
Speaker 3: be will be shaped, will be shaped by that. But
Speaker 3: I do think the new generation of voters is is
Speaker 3: kind of structurally different than previous ones. You know that
Speaker 3: people have always thought that young people are to the left,
Speaker 3: like that's but if you if you go back and look,
Speaker 3: young people supported Reagan. There's some debate over whether or
Speaker 3: not they supported Nixon, but it was very very close.
Speaker 3: It was not, by no means a blowout for the
Speaker 3: for Democrats. It's just that the media likes to talk
Speaker 3: about the left wing ones lot more, and so it
Speaker 3: always seemed like generations were left wing. These people under
Speaker 3: thirty thirty five today really genuinely are much more progressive.
Speaker 3: And so that is that is going to mean that
Speaker 3: they're going to see the politics of the squad as
Speaker 3: just normal, like this is how politics ought to be. Like,
Speaker 3: They're not going to see that as radical at all.
Speaker 3: And I finish toward the end of the book with
Speaker 3: this wild poll that came out in January in New
Speaker 3: Hampshire where they asked New Hampshire voters, you know who
Speaker 3: are who's your most popular, who's the most who's the
Speaker 3: Democrat that you liked the most? And you would not
Speaker 3: have expected it when in twenty eighteen, but the answer
Speaker 3: was Okazu Cortez and I asked her if she'd seen
Speaker 3: that poll and she was like, I did see that.
Speaker 3: I don't believe it, but I but I did, but
Speaker 3: I did see it. So that's that's an interesting place
Speaker 3: that this goes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Ryan, you wanted to close this out with another
Speaker 2: expert short like.
Speaker 3: Two page reading, else to do it? Here? This is
Speaker 3: this is called this is from chapter six, which is
Speaker 3: called doing the thing. And this takes place during the
Speaker 3: government shutdown. If you remember, Trump shut down the government
Speaker 3: in order to get his wall at the end of
Speaker 3: twenty eighteen and wouldn't open it back up. Never got
Speaker 3: money for the wall, but built a lot of it,
Speaker 3: built a lot of it anyway. So on January twenty second,
Speaker 3: twenty nineteen, a month into what would become the longest
Speaker 3: government shut down in US history, House Democrats made a
Speaker 3: bid to open things back up, unveiling legislation to fund
Speaker 3: only the agencies under the Department of Homeland Security. There
Speaker 3: would be no wall money, but some supplemental funds would
Speaker 3: go toward improving conditions at the border for detained migrants.
Speaker 3: Six months earlier, AOC had been at those facilities and
Speaker 3: had been shocked by what she saw the treatment of
Speaker 3: the migrants, she said was fascist. Photos of her pained
Speaker 3: emotional reaction had become synonymous with democratic outrage over Trump's policy.
Speaker 3: In her televised debate with Joe Crowley, she had savaged
Speaker 3: him for his hypocrisy on the issue, arguing that while
Speaker 3: he had called immigration and customs enforcement fascist, he wouldn't
Speaker 3: do anything about it. If you think this system is fascist,
Speaker 3: she asked him, then why don't you vote to eliminate it.
Speaker 3: He had no answer. There is no good answer, But
Speaker 3: now it was her responsibility to offer one. She sat
Speaker 3: down with her staff and opened the discussion. Do we
Speaker 3: vote against this funding proposal? She laid out the terms
Speaker 3: of the debate to her team. The bill includes money
Speaker 3: for things we don't support, and we might be the
Speaker 3: only vote against it. Meanwhile, a lot of this is symbolism.
Speaker 3: The party is trying to reopen the government. And it's
Speaker 3: not like this bill will pass the Senate and get
Speaker 3: signed by Trump. It's a messaging bill, and the message
Speaker 3: is that Democrats are being the adults in the room
Speaker 3: while Trump is having a tantrum. Assembled that day was
Speaker 3: most of her team, including Chakrabardi, Corbyn Trent, her legislative
Speaker 3: director Ariel Eckbald, and her new legislative aid Dan Riffle.
Speaker 3: AOC noted that eventually she would have to vote for
Speaker 3: a CR short for continuing resolution, a bill that continued
Speaker 3: to fund the government on the same terms as it
Speaker 3: had been funded. The c R would include the money
Speaker 3: not just for Homeland Security, but also for many other
Speaker 3: agencies whose missions she supported. Drawing a line in the
Speaker 3: sand now, she said, would mean voting against all future
Speaker 3: government funding bills, even when it came to actually reopening
Speaker 3: the government. Where do we draw that line? She asked?
Speaker 3: What is enough? Before she could finish the question, Trent
Speaker 3: interrupted with an answer in the form of his own question, Yeah,
Speaker 3: what is enough to fund a fascist agency that cage's children.
Speaker 3: Nobody had an answer. We all just kind of looked
Speaker 3: at each other. Dan Riffle recalled, like nothing, nothing is enough,
Speaker 3: so we're a no on this. Trent's intervention had ended
Speaker 3: the conversation, but it was clear that what they were
Speaker 3: trying to do was going to be a challenge. You
Speaker 3: could see not just her but me, everybody in the
Speaker 3: office sort of like doing the thing. Riffle said, it's
Speaker 3: going to be hard. He realized it's going to be
Speaker 3: hard for us to be principled here. The squad huddled
Speaker 3: and agreed to vote as a block, making up the
Speaker 3: only four no votes on the bill. A few days later,
Speaker 3: Trump caved and the House voted on a measure that
Speaker 3: was actually meaningful. The bill would reopen the government and Ice,
Speaker 3: the fascist agency AOC wanted abolished. This time, it wasn't
Speaker 3: a messaging bill. This funding would actually get to Ice. AOC.
Speaker 3: Stuck with her no vote on the way to the
Speaker 3: House floor, she shot an Instagram video. Walking beside her
Speaker 3: was Riffel, and she introduced him to her followers. He's
Speaker 3: every billionaire is a policy failure on Twitter, so yeah.
Speaker 3: She equipped a reference to his handle, which had recently
Speaker 3: sparked a national conversation about whether the claim was was fair.
Speaker 3: She subtitled the video with an explanation of her vote.
Speaker 3: Most of our votes are pretty straightforward, but today was
Speaker 3: a tough, nuanced call, she wrote. We didn't vote with
Speaker 3: the party because one of the spending bills included ice funding,
Speaker 3: and our community felt strongly about not funding that. When
Speaker 3: the role was called, precisely one Democrat voted no. Representative
Speaker 3: Okazio Cortes. The rest of the squad had gone along
Speaker 3: casting The vote was draining. She'd been pressed on the
Speaker 3: floor by party leadership to switch. Told by whipstaff she'd
Speaker 3: be put on a list. What kind of list? Nobody said,
Speaker 3: but did it, but it didn't sound like a good one.
Speaker 3: She'd been called in for a personal meeting with Steny Hoyer.
Speaker 3: Everyone had told her that what she was doing was wrong,
Speaker 3: that was hurting the team. It weighed on her. The
Speaker 3: final vote came laid into the night past midnight, and
Speaker 3: Chakrabarty walked aoc back to the apartment. Back to her apartment,
Speaker 3: as they passed Capitol Hill's famous Mexican restaurant, Tortilla Coast,
Speaker 3: a worker was leaving, having just closed it down. Alexandria,
Speaker 3: is that you, he asked? She told him it was.
Speaker 3: I just wanted to say thank you for standing up
Speaker 3: for me and my family. It means so much, he
Speaker 3: told her. The wait for just that moment had lifted.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Ryan, I believe we'll be signing some books
Speaker 3: up here. Thank you, Crystal, My pleasure.