Bulwark Takes - Adam Kinzinger Teases a Run Against Ted Cruz?

Episode Date: November 15, 2025

NOTE: There are a few moments when the video cuts out. We apologize for these issues with the recording. Sam Stein sits down with former Congressman Adam Kinzinger at the Texas Tribune Festival to talk about “The Last Republican,” how the GOP became a personality cult, what January 6 did to his family, McCarthy’s surrender in Mar-a-Lago, the DOJ’s failures, and why winning back ex-MAGA voters means not shaming them. Kinzinger also weighs in on Trump’s $400M Qatar jet deal, corruption, his future in Texas politics, and whether he’d ever take on Ted Cruz.

Hey guys, me, Sam Stein again. I'm here in downtown Austin, in the shadow of the state capital. Just finished up a panel conversation with Adam Kinzinger at the Tribune Festival. It was awesome. Great conversation. We talked about everything. He's got a new movie out about him called The Les Republicans. We touched on that. What it's like to be in public office. The stress it puts on your family. What Democrats think to be doing in this moment to reach Republicans, reform Republicans, Maga Republicans, anything. and what his future has in store, he hinted, that he might make a run against Ted Cruz in the Senate. Don't take my word for him. Watch the video. Hope you enjoy it. Talk to you soon.

Hi, everybody. Oh, you guys are nice. Thank you. If Chris Murphy's still watching, I'll note you got a bigger applause. Thank you, everybody. That was important for me. I know. It actually was. I know that for a fact. Hello, everyone. I'm back. I'm joined by former congressman Adam Kinsinger, who you may or may not know there is a movie out about

Adam's last year in Congress. A little bit of drama is happening around that time. And I encourage people to actually seriously watch it. a blast Republican. It's on every platform, right? Yeah, it's like Amazon, Apple, and I think Google right now. And it's really great. I've watched a lot of terrible movies about politicians, and this one is not it. One of the things that really tickled me about the movie was,

had nothing to do with your time in office. It was about your childhood and your upbringing and how you became a Republican. and what an incredible dork you were. I just want to mention one part. I'm starting real low here. For Halloween, as a child, I think you were five or four, you dressed up as Jim Edgar, the governor of Illinois. Here's the worst part about it.

I was like 12, actually. Oh, 12, okay. That actually is worse in a way. It is way worse. I should have gone with five. You also put an election headquarters in your bedroom. Yeah, I did. So?

Isn't that normal, right? In all seriousness, because a lot of people know you from the work you've done around January 6th, and of course your advocacy after and what you're doing right now. But I don't think a lot of people know the story of your Republican upbringing. And I think it's important to tell the story because it does provide an interesting, I guess, flagpole for how you've ended up at this spot. So why don't you talk a little bit about your, you know, how you became a conservative in your Republican childhood when you were dressing up as a governor.

My Alex P. Keaton years? Yeah. No, look, I mean, you know, my parents were Republicans, so I think that ultimately, you know, and not your traditional. Republicans. I mean, my dad ran a homeless shelter. My mom is a public school teacher. So if you think about that, like from the perspective of Republicans, because we believe in the role that America plays in the world, but then also that kind of, I'll call it compassionate side of my family. And I think that ultimately comes into play. But yeah, I mean, I was a kid when Ronald Reagan was president,

my favorite movie, I think I say this in the film, is Red Dawn, which is a great movie, by the way. You know, it's like you're kind of, you're brought up in that time when it's like Rocky, Red Dawn, Rambo, stuff like that. But the thing that really drove me to being a Republican is just, again, I really believe in the country and the role that America plays in the world in terms of as an example of self-governance to the rest of the world, which is why I was so passionate about the failures on January 6th as well. And, you know, over the last few years, certainly that party has lost that. There is nothing that reflects that anymore. But that's what, I would say, kind of the things that brought me up through that.

You were elected at the age of 32. It was part of the Tea Party wave. And at that time, the Republican Party seemed like it was going in a very interesting direction. Obviously, small government, reactionary towards Obama and Obamacare. The next presidential candidate was Mitt Romney. And yet here we sit not that far removed from that era. I mean, a decade plus, and it's unrecognizable to me. What happened?

We could spend 45 minutes on it, but what do you think was the cause of that drift? Look, I think it's a combination of things. So I think I have the ability now to be able to, the luxury, I guess, to look back, kind of divorced from being in the middle of the fight and see, okay, 1994 was a delineating moment in the GOP, right, with Newt Gingrich. 2010 was a delineating moment, but there were also still kind of a group of us that thought we were conservative, but ended up for the next 10 years doing battle with the right in our party.

But you saw the extreme right kind of bubble up. So I think that's part. You can kind of see the trend that way, and then when Donald Trump came along, people will say, like, did Donald Trump cause it, or was he a reaction? I think both. I think where the party was going, allowed him entry into being considered a candidate. And then his shamelessness, I mean, honestly, his ability to just have no shame has accelerated

then the party's ultimate, what I think is demise. But what leads up to that, you know, I think 30 years of Fox News or AM radio programming people to believe that the enemy is not an enemy overseas. it's not, you know, the commies, it's not, you know, whatever. The enemy is the left. And for 30 years, I mean, it's probably been 40 years, if you really count, you know, to hear over and over again that the left is your enemy. And then all of a sudden a guy like Trump comes along and you say,

look, he's willing to fight. He hates the people I hate. And if somebody hates the people you hate and your hate is your driving factor, you actually don't care about policy anymore. You'll pretend to yourself that this is still a conservative. party, even though, by the way, there is nothing conservative about the Republican Party anymore. And I think that's it. I think the right-wing culture kind of created fertile ground for really a dictator, really a cult leader to come along and say, I hate the people you do,

now do what I say, basically. I forgot to mention the most important part of the movie, and I apologize for that. It's directed by your favorite movie director, Steve Pink, who directed your favorite movie, Hot Top Time Machine. Time Machine. Why is that your favorite movie? Because it's awesome. Raise your hand if you've seen Hot Tub Time Machine. All right. There are some, you know, some partiers in here. I'd say 7 to 8% of the audience. There's a couple. There's a couple people that like to party. He also did High Fidelity, Gross Point Blank, and some other movies. But yeah, really, really funny guy. But when I found out he was the Hot Tub Time Machine guy, I'm like, all right, I'm working

with this dude. it was an odd part of the movie back to Trump I think for the first three and a half years of his administration I don't know if this is fair to say but it was my interpretation is that you tried your best to get along and make sure his worst impulses were maybe push back

but you weren't raising the alarms like you are now what was going through your your head during that first term? Because certainly there were elements that people were alarmed by, and do you see it differently now? Yeah, I mean, look, during the first term, so I didn't support him in 2016, which, you know, as a sitting Republican, I think there were only five of us that didn't. And so then he wins. And, you know, at that point, it's like, okay, he won, he's president, you know, there was still hope that maybe this was all an act and he's going to go be a normal president. And actually, weirdly, like, his first administration seems normal in comparison.

It wasn't normal, by the way, guys, but it feels normal in comparison. And so then, you know, I look at it and I'm like, okay, I'm in Congress. My job here is to try to, I'm going to try to make this work with Trump. He is the president. I am a Republican, but I still would call him out quite often. You know, when he'd call to deport Ilan Omar or whatever he did, I would call him out. And so we always had a pretty tense relationship. The interesting thing, though, is every time I went to the Oval Office, he was like weirdly obsessed with me. And I say this because it's like he never had me. So he's weirdly obsessed. He's like a high school kid that that girl won't say yes to go to the prom. So he's like hyper-focused. And but then, I mean,

you know, and I tried, I tried. And then ultimately, where we really started to kind of break ranks was when he started with the flirting with QAnon. I had paid attention to Q&N when this was coming out. I was calling it out. All my colleagues are like, don't address Q&N, you just give it air, which isn't true anymore. Now you have to address those things. And then the night of the election, when Trump literally says, and when you convince a significant amount of people that the system itself is broken, all you're doing is starting a clock, whether it's in three months, which it happened to be, or in five years, you're starting a clock for violence. Because we're a country, we're proud of the fact that we were founded as a violent

revolution, right? A revolution against the king. We're proud of that. So the idea that now all of a sudden you're going to tell people that they are unrepresented again and you think there's not going to be violence, there is. I want to get into McCarthy, so I'll wait because I assume maybe that comes up. I have them right here. Don't worry. It's coming down. I want to excoriate. I want to, I want to. We're getting there. Yeah, we'll get there. Patience, we got time. In the movie, on the day of January 6th, it seems apparent that at least your wife was anxious about you being there.

I believe you had one staffer there with you, is that right? No, no staffers. You're by yourself. To the degree you can get a little granular here, I would like to know what the day in that moment was like for you, where you were and what was going through your head. So, I mean, I'll touch on McCarthy. Patience, we're going to get to Kevin McCarty. On January 1st, I was on a conference call with all the Republicans, and I make the comment to Kevin, there's going to be violence, man.

I know all these folks think there's going to be violence, and he just was dismissive. So on the 6th, now I didn't necessarily know that there was going to be like an occupation of the Capitol, but I assumed there was going to be violent acts. On the 6th, I actually took my gun into work, which, you know, usually I'm armed, but I never was armed. armed going to the Capitol because we had so many police and I'm not a guy that carries a gun so that I can feel cool, right? I carried if I need it. But I took it in that day. And literally for the first time, I asked my wife to stay home. I made the mistake a few times of being like, I told Sophia to stay home. Don't say that. I ask her to stay. And then I did tell my staff to stay home because I just, there was no reason to have anybody, you know, exposed to potential violence. And you're Here's the thing I don't talk about this much because I forget. I'm walking around the capital complex. It's closed and I'm seeing people in MAGA hats that are not supposed to be inside the security perimeter.

It was kind of a weird feeling. But anyway, I go to the floor, proceeding start. I see on Twitter that there is, you know, they're breaching the perimeter. And if you guys know much about that day, it was actually about 45 minutes between when the perimeter was breached and actually they cleared the floor. There was a lot of like miscommunication. Nobody really could fathom what was happening. well I saw it and I'm like I'm going back to my office and thankfully I left by the time I got to my office the window behind my desk so it would be like behind me actually faces the west front of the capital and I remember opening that and just hearing explosions boom boom boom boom boom and it happened to be the exact moment that DC Metro police showed up and they actually saved the capital they don't get enough credit and they came in with the non-lethal I end up talking to my wife on the phone you know she says

says, she tells a story about how that moment she realized what it meant to be the wife of a politician and what it meant to put yourself in danger. And I think part of the reason that makes me emotional is because, like, I never until quite recently really understood that, right? Because, you know, you're just so absorbed with what you're doing. But anyway, she, we talk on the phone and hang up and I just, I'll tell you, I just got this real sense of just, like, evil. And I can't describe it beyond that. I'm not a guy that, like, you know, goes on the healing shows and talks about evil everywhere. It was like the second time of my life, I just felt, it felt evil, what was happening. Anyway, long and the short of it,

I hunker down, end up giving my speech when they take back to Capitol. And it was the worst day. I've been to war, and this was by far the worst day I've ever lived through. And for anybody to say that this was anything but what it was is, looping. ludicrous. It is ludicrous. And I'll just, I'll just quickly say, history will be brutal to people that continue to push that big lie someday when their kids are like, you've got to be kidding me. We know exactly what happened. I think in five or ten years it's not going to be a single person in the country that ever admits they supported Donald Trump, to be honest with you. That's my hope.

Well, now I've got to push Kevin McCarthy back a little bit. Because the movie is in part about units, in part about your wife. Again, people should see it, but what it focuses on is the intense pressure that our political system puts on families who are a part of it. And your wife is clearly anxious about what's happening around you all while raised. a small child. And I'm just, you know, what was it like for her and also relatedly... Did you say something? Yeah.

What was it like for her and also relatedly? What is it... How do you get... We were talking about society, but how do you convince good-natured people who want to actually be in this industry for the right reasons to get into politics or when, in reality, it involves incredible threats, physical and mental, to participate in it. Yeah, I mean, I think you guys can look around and see that the quality of representative has gone down, right? And I think part of that is, look, you know, ultimately, it's tough.

For somebody that is like, look, I'm not in it for the ego, or I'm not in it for the title, or I'm not in it for the identity, I just want to go serve. It's hard to convince somebody with that pure intention to actually go do this now. But I will say this first off is I still believe public service is honorable.

And we need honorable people in it. And even though I jokingly say, I'm so glad I'm out of Congress, I'm not joking about that, but I, you know, pretend like I'm joking about it. I'm very proud of my time there. And I'm very happy that I was able to do it. I'm a middle-class kid that represented 750,000 people for 12 years.

How does that happen only in America? Well, other countries, but, you know, we do it in America like that too. But, you know, from my wife's perspective, yeah, I mean, look, she was involved in politics. This is an advantage. You know, she worked at the White House, and then she worked for Mike Pence. And her stories, you just wouldn't believe what actually would go on in that White House. And then she went to DHS and worked at the Department of Homeland Security as an assistant secretary of, like, comms, during COVID. So she lived in some of the most brutal times. And then when she got pregnant,

we basically stopped, she stopped working mercifully. But yeah, I mean, it's a massive impact. So I was lucky that she kind of enjoyed this part of it. But you also think about the fact, you know, you feel isolated when you go out. She had the same thing I had, which is like friends are like, you know, that she knew maybe through Trump or whatever, that all of a sudden or kind of excommunicating her because she believes in the type of things I'm doing. And so, yeah, it's a brutal, it's an impact, and it's something that for me, even three years out of Congress, I still have to work through what that did psychologically. But I would say anybody considering public service, I say this to them, do it, we need you,

but be willing to walk away. That's the key. Be willing to walk away. Don't make it your identity. Because when you do, that's when you get in and do things you don't really believe. All right. I've held back long enough. Kevin McCarthy.

People will not believe this, but it's true. He offered to officiate your wedding? He did, yeah. Yeah, okay. After January 6th, you're one of 10 to vote for impeachment. Obviously, it gets stimmed in the Senate. And there's two sort of important moments that I think are real kind of sliding door moments, or if you want to say butterfly, flapping its wing,

moments. And I'm curious which one you think was more impactful. One was Mitch McConnell going to the Senate floor and saying, I trust that the courts can deal with this, which they have, right? No. The other was Kevin McCarthy going on to Mara Lago in an act of rehabilitation or subservience, whatever you want to call it. Which one would you say was more consequential to get they it is assumed that Trump is persona non grata it is assumed that he's out of our life if you guys remember when he left Andrews on inauguration day nobody came to his departure nobody but like one or two of his kids how pathetic right of a man is he to have nobody show up so the assumption in the party is Trump's gone so I in this mean in the meantime I'm working with

the other impeachers trying to be like, who would ultimately be the other impeachers, trying to be like, guys, let's take over the party. We've got to kick out Kevin McCarthy because McCarthy led us to this point on January 6th because he ended up opposing certification. And let's be honest, the other nine impeachers, all of them said basically eventually, no, now's the time to heal the party. And I couldn't do this by myself. With the 10 of them, I probably could have, or we could have made an effort to get rid of McCarthy to take over the party, to go out, to do a me a culprit of the American people, to tell them the truth of what, but on January 6th, to apologize, to swear we'd never do it again, to put out a nice agenda, and to say that Donald Trump is

a cancer on our country. And I think there is a less than, but close to 50% chance we could have succeeded. Instead, the impeachers didn't do anything, and a few weeks later, Kevin McCarthy goes to Mar-a-Lago, and at that moment, on a dime, the party becomes Trump's party again. What is the internal House Republican meeting like when McCarthy is in Mar-a-Lago? I mean, you come back and he's there. Surely there were people saying, dude, what are you doing? Like, why would you do that? But I'm very curious what those internal conversations were like.

Well, as squirrely as Kevin is, he's actually a good politician, political, you know, just like being politician. He would tell people like me, and I hadn't talked to him since January 1st in my life. I've never talked to him since January 1st. But I think Liz had reached out like, you know, what are you doing, Kevin? And his response is to the group like us. He would be like, well, listen, I was in Palm Beach doing fundraising, and the former president invited me, and you're not going to go see a former president. I'm like, well, yeah, when three weeks ago he tried to overthrow an election, you are.

not not going to go see him. And you are not going to go see him. And then he would tell other people that, and this came out in the January 6th committee, that like, he went and saw Donald Trump because his people called they were worried because Donald wasn't eating. Do you remember that? I did not remember that. Literally goes, they said he's not eating. He's depressed. So I went to encourage him to eat. Did they try a Big Mac versus just the cheeseburgers? I don't know. I don't know. And literally he said that. So in the, in the, we would meet like kind of how we're all meeting here, right? Imagine it's all the Republican members of Congress. And yeah, I mean, it would be like a good third would stand up and be like, this is stupid. You know, a third would shut up like they always do because they don't care. And a third, you know, are on Trump's side.

But the second he went to Mara Lago, yeah, the internal conversations where I cannot believe this, my goodness, this is awful. external conversations where, yeah, we believe in Donald Trump. And I'm going to tell you why Kevin McCarthy did it. Not because he's a Trump fan. Because more than anything, Kevin McCarthy wanted to be Speaker of the House. And he knew that he could not take on MAGA and succeed in two years. It would be a three or four year fight to fully eradicate it. And he knew that he could not become Speaker if he took on that fight. So what's the easiest thing to do? Embrace him. I say this guys, and I know probably many in here have battled cancer or you have friends that have battled cancer or family. The one thing I know about cancer is this. You do not defeat cancer by overwhelming it with good cells in your body.

Right? You have to eradicate the cancer because cancer spreads. It's the same in politics. You do not have a little bit of cancer and you're like, well, we got all these good cells that are going to make it better. That's not what happens and it's the same. My last retrospective question that I want to get into sort of the news of the day, but you know, obviously the January 6th committee does its work. You were surprised to be appointed to it, then you were appointed to it, then you did all the work with it. I think a lot of people look back now and wonder if things could have been done differently,

not from your perspective, but from the Biden Department of Justice perspective. And this movie really does get at this incredible tension that's existing, where you're working around the clock to produce this report. Everyone's asking, you're going to make recommendations to DOJ? And meanwhile, it's almost like a black hole where we don't know if Merrick Garland is actually on the ball. How frustrating was it in real time? Was there any effort to sort of signal to them, hey, kick it into higher gear? Yeah, listen, I have a lot of bitterness against DOJ, and the current DOJ, but, you know, different story.

So we get, you know, we start our investigation, I guess, like six months after January 1st. So we already are a little behind. We know we only have about a year and a half to get this done. And we also don't have the tools DOJ has. We can subpoena. We can refer to the DOJ to prosecute people that don't refer to the subpoenas. We did that in a couple cases. But other than that, you can just come in and plead the fifth in front of Congress,

and there's nothing we can do. We don't have really any other thing. But even with that, even with that kind of blunted tools that we had, we ended up producing obviously a really good and thorough investigation. We were hampered by time. The DOJ, and I was listening to Tim had on the bulwark, a lady who just wrote a scrap to the bulwark. A lady who just wrote a book about the DOJ. I forget the book's name. But, you know, she's like, yeah, I can confirm that in fact the DOJ did not start their investigation of Donald Trump until we had our first hearing that next summer revealing some things.

Think about that. We had been in investigation a year already. A year. We have our first hearing, when we go into those like kind of nine hearing blockbuster summer, right? Our first hearing, DOJ goes, holy blank word, we have got to, there is some there there, and they then began their very first investigation of Donald Trump.

Now, if they'd have started when we started, but we wouldn't have to have been rushing against the clock to send Donald Trump to trial. The American people would have seen what DOJ had and made a decision. Merritt Garland went after all these 1,500 people or whatever that broached the capital, which was the right thing to do, and ignored because he didn't want to look like it was political. Well, congratulations. Now you have the most political DOJ in history, right? So, yeah, I know that for a fact, and the DOJ then, by the way, is like begging us, us for all of our research immediately after our first hearing and we have a responsibility.

We can't just turn it all over to DOJ because we have our own investigation and we have people we're protecting as well, right? Deals we've cut. And so it's like you can have this stuff after the investigation's over and, you know, there we are. And obviously the DOJ had a compelling case they ultimately put together. Had they started a year earlier, this would be a very different world. Yeah, damn. You mentioned how Trump 1.0 looks relatively normal to Trump 2.0, although it really wasn't that normal. Is there anything that has, I mean, lots of surprise you, but what are the things that have most shocked you about how he has acted in his second go-around as president? I don't know if it shocked me because I knew that he was going to put sycophants all around him. The thing that

kind of caged Trump in the first term was, you know, you had generally honorable people that served in positions that would say no when something broke the Constitution. He's only put people in place that tell him yes. By the way, there was just a court case that, or a DOJ, a DOD, Department of defense finding about the legality of the boat strikes in the Atlantic against the Venezuelans. And basically their viewpoint, the DOD's official viewpoint, is any order the president gives is now a legal order because he is the president. In theory, that could include shooting American civilians. The president now has any order he gives is a legal order. But what has surprised me the most is probably the lack of institutional pushback on him.

We're starting to see a little bit of backbone, but I think the fact that he, I mean, look, I'm shocked he actually tore down a ballroom, or is building a ballroom. I'm shocked that he is basically suing the government and then he's going to find for himself. You know, and that stuff is shocking to me. But probably the biggest surprise is that initially institutions of education, media, which is why independent media and nonprofit media is so important by the, way. So I do want to quick aside and say thank you for supporting Texas Tribune and non-profit media and independent media as well here. Because what are you seeing now is this

conglomeration of frankly far-right people that are buying up all the media sphere. And that's a concern. Just a quick clarification. It's Department of War, not Department of Defense. I still refuse. You said people are starting to get their backbone. I guess. There's one person in particular that's been kind of curious to me, an old colleague of yours, Marjorie Taylor Green. I'm not going to ask you about her, although it is very curious

why she's doing this, and I'm wondering if you interpret that as her kind of trying to get ahead of something. When you say people are getting their backbone, What do you mean? Marjorie Taylor Green is the biggest con artist, by the way. Like, she has not found Jesus. Okay. Now, I guess it's a fair.

It is a fair question about, you know, is she playing this role because she sees something coming? Yeah. Maybe. I think clearly she wants to run for president. I think clearly she recognizes. I know. But, dude, we said, we giggled when Trump wanted to run. 2015, right? Clearly she wants to run for president, so she may be figuring that if I do this like

kind of, you know, I go on the view and I do this one lane here, maybe I can find, you know, I can trick people. But keep in mind, this is still the same lady that chased down victims of gun, of school violence, right, and called them cosplay actors and stuff like that. But it's possible. I mean, she may be seeing that. Look, I personally don't think, I'm more optimistic short term on America now than I was because I don't think this Trump thing can continue unabated.

Well, let me put it another way then. Because we've always, I mean, I can't count how many times there's been the narrative of, oh, the walls are closing in, and, you know, this is, this will surely, you know, be the thing that gets old Donald. And it never really does. So are there things currently that you're looking at on the political landscape,

it could be the Epstein files, it could be the cost of living and affordability, It could be, you know, moral repulsion at what's happening with ICE. What are the things that you look at and say these are actual real vulnerabilities? By the way, I don't know if you guys have been following this argument on social media. There are now people, including Megan Kelly, arguing that 15 is not really underage because they're developed. I'm serious.

It's true. Yeah. That's how you're going to defend Trump on the Epstein files. 15's not really underage. honestly guys let's go back to the caveman days um look i i think i don't think there's going to be if the upscene files don't collapse in on him uh then i don't think anything will absolutely be this like crumbling factor right i do think what you need to see it's like slicing a potato right you're you're slicing away a little bit a few people at a time from donald trump

some of that's the upstein files some of that has been you know beef to argentina some of that has been whatever. Now the problem is if you only get your media from one source, you know, Fox, and you're mad at Trump and then you go back to Fox, trust me, they put salve on you and heal you, right, and convince you that the left is actually far worse than

this thing you disagree with on Donald Trump, but you're starting to see it. Quick aside, there is a group called Leaving Maga, and a guy named Rich Logis that started it. He was a former MAGA. Hated me. Now we're friends. Kind of funny. and he's literally created like a support group for people that leave MAGA.

And it's necessary because when you leave MAGA, you are leaving your identity behind. You are leaving friends and family behind. You're leaving like, it's like leaving a cult, really. And so I say all that to say, we're seeing some people peeling away. I think that's the best we can expect. I think Trump's numbers now are bad. can get worse, I don't know how much worse, but I will say this as a plea to you all. If you see somebody that's like, I've seen the light, I don't like Trump anymore,

can you please not post on Twitter, well, screw you, you should have known, right? Because I want to be honest with you, if we want to win again, you're going to have to win over people that voted for Donald Trump. And for me, I don't care when you see the light, as long as you see the light, right? So if the question is how to win those people over and how to be back Donald Trump, what are the pieces of advice you would give to Democrats about the issues they should be focusing on

and the way, I should say, the tactics they should be deployed because you're absolutely right. There are echo chambers that people escape to and they won't get messaging that contradicts what they want to believe. So what is the minority party to do about that and the issue set? Yeah, I mean, even when you're in the minority party, and even if everybody watches like Fox, for instance, there is always bleed through.

And, you know, if you're hanging out on X, you'll eventually see some of the messaging from the other side. It's just quite, you know, you're quite outnumbered by the propaganda. Look, I think this is just my humble suggestion, and I've been wrong about things, but my humble suggestion is take the lessons from last week, or two weeks ago from the election. A moderate-ish, although I don't love the term moderate because it sounds like milk toast. Let's call it a radical centrist.

I don't know. This has got to be some word. It worked great in Virginia. It worked great in New Jersey. I'm not the biggest Mondamni. I can never say, Mom Donnie fan. but it worked for New York, great, okay? Like, I think the best thing Democrats can do to win

is to put people up for office that reflect the community they're running in. Now, I also am not telling Democrats you have to become Republicans to win. I'm not, because I want you to be true to what you believe, but also recognize that incremental change in certain areas is better than nothing, right? So if you're interested in things like abortion rights, right, well, it doesn't matter the fact that there's no more pro-life Democrats because there's no more Democrats in power.

And so what's actually happened to abortion? It's become illegal everywhere because Democrats didn't have power, whereas it was protected when Democrats had power, even though there were 30 or 40 pro-life Democrats at the time. Texas, right? Probably you don't want to put up the furthest left person running for the Senate. That's why I think between the two candidates, two big ones, Colin Allred and the Senator James Tala Rico, I think both are going to be good options. And that's good. So Democrats being able to play that field a little bit is really good.

And so that would be my suggestion. And then on just a messaging, the economy is in bad shape, I think, even though they're not going to put out numbers for October, which is unbelievable, by the way. Economies in bad shape. That is always going to hit people. Democrats need to have a message for that. Of course, affordability is a big issue. And guys, I think the other big one, besides affordability, is corruption. If you ever take down a corrupt president or an autocrat, it has always, always, always, always because of corruption. Always. Or the U.S. military goes in and kicks you out, one of the two. Let's hope it's not that. Well, I guess I have to play the game now with you because it lit. So I did this with, I like gamifying some of the stuff.

And with Murphy, I did the same thing. But I asked Adam offstage if he, for this, I don't know what he's going to say, to rank his top three corrupt acts by Donald Trump. And I'm very curious. Your top three is we're going to go from least corrupt to most corrupt. Oh, man. Okay, least corrupt. I mean, honestly, least corrupt is probably the fact that he's suing himself for $250 million

and we'll find it in his favor. It might get it, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I would say that's very corrupt, but probably the least, which is weird to say. Next, I would say, is just his family following him every foreign affairs trip he goes to and then building a hotel or a golf course or something. Do you guys remember all the talk about Hunter Biden? What was it that Hunter Biden did?

He was on the board of Burisma. He used his father's name to make $20,000 a month or whatever on the board of Burisma. Okay, dirty, bad, not a good thing. The Trump kids have already made $2 billion through cryptocurrency. Just cryptocurrency, by the way. You know, you're also seeing these companies that are about to go public that magically, right before their IPO, put Donald Trump Jr. on their board so he gets shared. and then it goes to IPO. So what happens? Now that company gets favorable treatment.

Donald Trump Jr. as part of his selfless service to the board gets shares private that then turn public. Think of all that money, right? That's the second least corrupt, okay? What I actually think the most corrupt thing is, which we don't talk about enough, is the $400 million $747 given to him by Qatar. Now, the reason I say it is this is because magically now, out of nowhere, Donald Trump announced that Qatar basically has Article 5 protection similar to NATO. Out of nowhere. Yes, we have a military base there, and we will defend our base.

But the idea that any attack on Qatar is an attack on the United States when we won't even put the same thing on Ukraine, is insane. Okay? And then let's take that $400 million jet. What actually happens? Right now, the government is fragged, that's a military term, is set to spend a billion dollars to turn it into Air Force One. And then when Donald Trump leaves office, he takes it with him. He keeps it.

By the way, the next president needs to seize it. I'm just saying, like, seize it. But Donald Trump takes that with him. it goes to the ownership of the Trump Museum. And they do that because people think to the Reagan Museum where they're like, oh, there's a 707 hanging in the Reagan Museum, so that's going to happen with the Trump Museum. They're not going to hang a 747 in a museum.

What actually happens is the museum owns that plane, keeps it up, and Donald Trump keeps flying it. And then, by the way, the U.S. government has to buy a new Air Force One because the Air Force One's about to crash out, right? that to me is the most corrupt thing. It is, and it's in your face. And I got to tell you, Sam, the weirdest thing about this is, you know, my wife is Salvadorian, and, you know, they have a long lineage of corrupt leaders, including the current one, by the way. But these leaders will leave office and all of a sudden be worth $500 million, all the sudden, right? At least they do it in

secret. This guy's doing it out in the open. And in a way, that's part of why it feels so unbelievable. Yeah, I think the fact that he does it out in the open actually in a weird way benefits him, right? We see it and we're like, oh, well, is that just normal, right? Who would do that out in the open if it was

illegal? All this raises a really interesting point and it gets that kind of attention that I think a lot of Democrats face, at least, which is how much do you make the future about correcting the wrongs of the Trump year

or moving beyond the Trump beers. And you talked about Trump as a cancer that needs to be eradicated. How can the party then not say we are going to seize the plane? We are going to actually take down the ballroom. We are going to go after the cryptocurrency deals. We are going to prosecute the wrongs.

I mean, how can that not be part of the Democratic Party platform if, to use your analogy, this is a cancer that needs eradication? It's a great question. And I guess my first knee-jerk reaction answer would be like, look, I think you can do both. I think on a campaign where you're reaching out and you're talking, that's when you hit the affordability issues. I mean, this is what, I'm sure the governor or the mayor elect of New York and the new governor elect of Virginia

and New Jersey did well, which is like they went on the ground and talked about the issues that matter to those people. And that's going to be very important. So I would argue that a campaign needs to be about that future-focused message, right? Aggressive, it doesn't mean run a positive campaign, but also do paint a vision. And most importantly, by the way, I think this is a lesson from Donald Trump is like, be genuine.

Like, I think we have to be willing to forgive people saying something stupid or in all honesty, having bad tattoos or whatever. We need to be able to say to somebody we want real people that have made real mistakes running for office because I'm going to tell you, people right now, particularly younger generations, they react well to people that actually appear

genuine and are genuine. So I think that's going to be important. And then secondly, I think it is essential. Here's how you deal with the corruption issue is it is essential, I think, right now, for those in office democratic leaders to talk about what they will do when they take the majority and talk about their agenda, which is you can kind of do two things. Number one, it's telling the American people what your agenda is without doing it through a campaign. campaign, which is like we will have hearings on the Qatar jet. We will talk about these bad deals. The other thing, it sends a message. It really actually sends a message to future people that want to be corrupt with Donald Trump that, yeah, you may be corrupt for the next year,

but understand you're going to be drug in front of a committee, so you're not going to be able to hide that. So I think utilitarily, it's, I don't even know if that's a word, but like it actually has a purpose. And then it also, again, sends to the American people what your agenda. So that was a long answer to say, campaign, positive, focus on what people want, you know, be aggressive. The actual governance is like, we have to hold people accountable to this. That's what I think. And then when the new president wins, they actually do need to put commissions in place to root out this corruption, I think. So in two minutes, we're going to turn to audience questions. I should have made note that you can

submit your questions. It's too late now. so don't worry. You submit them online. We've already got them. Sorry. So a little rapid fire. Just two rapid fire questions. Going back to the movie a little bit,

you had a really interesting relationship with Nancy Pelosi, who at one point in your life, I'm sure you demonized and then grew to have what I think is genuine respect for her. She announced she's retiring and will be stepping down at the end of her term. just kind of want to hear your reflections on her and what she symbolized for you, I guess. It's amazing that the different kind of allies you make. I went and did a fundraiser recently for Zo Lofgren in San Francisco, who I served with on the committee, never would have imagined doing it five years ago, right?

You become friends with people that you never imagine. My reflection on Pelosi is this is, I mean, I don't think there's ever been a more powerful speaker. I don't think there's ever been a more powerful, I mean, I guess you could go back to the Sam Rayburn days, but there's never been a more powerful kind of spokesperson for a party than her. I mean, I think some of the difficulties that Democrats feel right now is not necessarily that they're worse at messaging than, for instance, the Republicans were when we were in the minority. It's that the Democrats were always just so good at it with Nancy Pelosi, and now they're feeling kind of that loss. At the same time, Nancy Pelosi is doing the absolute right thing, you know,

by recognizing that it's time to step aside. That's the thing you have to do with a party is build up and encourage the next generation. It has to quit being about you. You know what's amazing to me is we can. I was thinking this the other day. I'm like, there has never been a generation X president. Isn't that crazy? That is a little crazy.

Like, there's no, like, and that's so. Generation X, by the way. We kind of always, I'm a very, I'm at the tail end of the Xers, and we always just disappear from everybody anyway. Oh, wow, wow. All right. For us. Yeah. I will just say the generation that preceded you has not provided the best. Last question. Speaking of future generation Xers, I mean, you have a lot of runway left. You obviously experienced that. house, you're never going to go back there in a million years. But that's just one chamber. What is the political future for you? I mean, if I could run against Ted Cruz, that would just be fun. I'm kind of joking. Hold on. Just so everyone knows. He lives in Texas now, just to be clear. I live in Texas now, so. Are you making a no? I'm not really going to run against him.

Why not? I mean, I'm not saying no, but like, I just saying, I'm just saying, I'm just saying, I'm just saying, I'm just saying, personally, it would feel so good until I lost. I wouldn't like that part, but no. No, look, here's the thing, and this is a God's honest truth. I am not ruling out a future run ever. I am ruling out running for the house again. I've done, I did 12 years.

Nobody should do longer than 12 years in the house. in my opinion, unless you rediscover like your passion. I think 12 years is enough. But yeah, I'd be open to whatever that looks like next. All right, we're going to turn out to some audience Q&A.

Hi, everyone. I'm Nick Garcia. I'm the region's editor at the Texas Tribune. Thank you all so much for being here and for submitting your questions. This first one comes from Donald, from Mar-Largo. He asks, why have you not returned my phone calls?

True question. It was submitted. We did not make that up. All right. Moving on. Following up on the last question, however, the last real question, Amanda from Tyler asks, since moving to Texas, have you thought about running for governor? As a lifetime Democrat, you would have my vote. Look, I'm not going to run as a Republican. I want to be clear. The party is gone. I hope someday it comes back, but it's gone. Yeah, I mean, look, would I love to do that? Yes. But let's be realistic. I've lived in Texas for about two and a half years. I don't know if I would be well qualified to run for governor of a state I've lived in for like two and a half years, particularly Texas. You guys are kind of proud of your state and I'm a ninth generation Texan, right? But I do love the state. I really do. And so I guess I would never say no, but I'm also realistic enough to know that they're going to be like, wait, this guy from Illinois. noise running for governor? Okay, you know. Karen M. from Austin asks, as a modern and traditional

Republican have left office here in Texas and across the country, I have hoped they would come together and form a new non-Trumpian Republican Party. Why hasn't that happened yet? Yeah, it's a great question, but it's simple is, well, there's two things. You almost would need to create something outside of the two-party structure, and the problem is that the powers that be, have written the rules so that it's almost impossible. As an example, in Illinois, I just kind of looked at what would happen if I ran for Congress as an independent. I needed 800 signatures to get on the ballot as a Republican. As an independent, I needed 4,000, no, 5,000, and it had to be from people that have never voted in a primary. It's like impossible, right? So those are the, those are the,

you can never do that. So then the question is, how do you compete within the GOP? And I'll say this, there was efforts to do that. They just got beat. And, you know, I think if you go back kind of to the early 2017, 2018, there was a very kind of strong group of holdouts still in the GOP that didn't love Trump that were fighting for a sane Republican Party. And again, they just got swallowed up by the anger or the vitriol, and a lot of them left the party. I mean, the amazing thing is, you know, what, five or eight years ago, people that were college educated tended to vote Republican. Today, that's Democratic. And that's because we've seen a massive political realignment. The one that concerns me, though, is Democrats are losing union members, and that can't be the case. I was a

pro-union Republican. I talked to unions a lot, and they told me, like, look, our membership is now voting 60% Republican. And it's like, we've got to flip that back. Preston from Austin asks, after the Trump administration ends, how do you see the Republican Party pivoting to keep the grasp of the MAGA movement that has become a large part of its base? Say that. Read that one more time. Oh, no. After the Trump administration ends, how do you see the Republican Party pivoting to keep grasp of the MAGA movement? Oh, okay. Look, I don't know. I mean, I think what you're starting to see, you're already starting to see this, by the way. is really the beginning of a civil war in the GOP. You know, they don't really believe in anything.

Once you become a party that's, you know, basically built around a personality, then you're going to have personalities fighting for power. You're starting to see, I mean, there was an article that came out recently that made Rubio look bad that supposedly was leaked by the Vance people. The second Donald Trump makes it clear he's not running again, and by the way, guys, I firmly believe he's not running. running again, then you will see this fight. And so I don't know how the Republican Party, because I don't know if there is a the Republican Party, how it either pushes out, keeps,

or whatever with the MAGA movement. I think you will see the party have an internal battle for what it looks like. And I have a hard time believing it's going to go back to be the party that we remember. John from Springfield, Illinois. Hey. Hey, thanks for watching, John. Who are are the Republicans currently in office that you admire? Are there any Governor Jim Edgars out there who you really, or were you really the last one? I didn't name the movie, but I think it's pretty aptly named. I mean, honestly, I can't think of a single Republican I respect anymore at office. I mean, you know, there's, I mean, I could think of people like, you know, Brad Raffensberger, right? Like people kind of at the state level that fought to defend.

you know, the integrity of the election system, but when I think about like the House or the Senate or whatever, it's hard for me to come up with anybody. I mean, yeah, no, sorry, I don't have anything. I wish I did. I really do wish I did. Laura from San Antonio asks, I'm a community college professor. My college freshman and sophomore students have had Trump as a president or presidential candidate since they were young. They have no frame of reference for our prior system of Congress working together. How do we cast a vision of a better way for our young people? That's a great question. I mean, I've thought about that, which is anybody under the age of 30, really, you know, if you go back to when Trump came down the

golden escalator, the vast majority of people, well, let's say, let's call it 25 and whatever, they probably weren't paying attention to politics prior even if they were kind of conscience. They weren't like me. And so this is all they. know. And that's going to be another three years, by the way. So how do you cast a vision of, like, I actually think that vision is not going to be cast for them. I think they have to cast it. I'll tell you, I just spoke, I was in Stanford. Smart kids, by the way. Not quite Illinois State University, but they're pretty smart. And, but I spoke to these kids and, you know, talking about government. They're very interested in like, I see in them an anger about social

media, an anger about what politics is. And so my hope is, yes, we can try to cast a good vision and be like, you know, it's okay. That's part of what the film is. One of the stories of the film is how the director and I have different political views, but we're friends. We like each other. So those kinds of things will help. But ultimately, I think it's going to have to be organic from that generation being like, screw this. We deserve better. And that's where I think it's going to happen, honestly. Kerry from Austin asks, what advice do you have

for everyday Democrats voters who work to turn out the vote in terms of dialogueing with Republican voters? Who worked to dialogue? Well, look, it's, I mean, here's a couple things I'll tell you. First off, dialogue is good. It's always good.

It's always good to understand, because when you when you have a flash of humanity with somebody, it's why I like humor so much, because, you know, or even sports. Like, I'm a Bears fan, and it's fun to me to see somebody who's like a far-right MAGA person cheering on the Bears, and I cheer the Bears,

and it's like, we kind of have something in common. You start to see humanity in people. Now, I want a caveat with, I don't think you need to find common ground with insurrectionists or with authoritarian. I really don't believe that. I mean, that is outside of how we've decided to do government, but within the spectrum of like pro-democracy, I mean, there's people all over

the spectrum. And I think there's real benefit in understanding how they think. And also having a good time recognizing that this is like kind of a cool moment where we get to have common cause with people we don't always agree with. I think about Ukraine. And like how if you go into a trench in Ukraine, you'll find somebody who played the piano, somebody who's a college professor, somebody who was a machinist, and you know, whatever. All these days. different life. They probably had nothing in common, but they are in the trench together fighting to defend the freedom of their country. That's like, in a way, what we're doing here. We all are in this kind of coalition together to defend democracy. So to me, it's like keep doing

that and understand that, like, see yourself not as a democratic movement, although you can be a Democrat, but look at yourself as a pro-democracy movement on the larger front. And then the last thing I'll say is for those of you that are like what and this is probably I'm sure a question coming up like what can I do more um probably not much okay you need to understand what you can do you can speak out you can get involved you can vote right but then the rest of the thing and I have to tell myself this every day take that burden that you carry and drop it because I'm going to tell you if you can take a deep breath and be like you know I can can control what I can control, and that's it, and enjoy life, you will stay engaged in this

fight. How many of you, by show of hands, I want to see them, know somebody that's given up on politics because they're exhausted, right? That works to the benefit of the people we're doing battle against. The best thing you can do is to preserve yourself and your joy and your happiness to keep fighting this long term. That's the key. Dan from Austin asks, Trump seems to get a lot of bad policy goals accomplished. In your opinion, do the Democrats have a messaging problem or a results problem? I think Democrats have a, we don't have enough people in office problem, you know. I mean, that's what, you know, he, they have full control of government.

I will tell you, in the shutdown, one of the areas where I was critical of Democrat, leadership's talking points is like, you know, they said the right thing, which is Republicans have all of government. And then Republicans come back with, yes, but you have the ability to stop things through a filibuster. And the Democratic response shouldn't have been like, yeah, I guess that's a good point. It should have been, yeah, we have a tiny, tiny bit of power. You've made it clear all year you had no desire to work with us. We have a tiny bit of power, and as the party that controls all of government, it is your responsibility to figure out what we need to fund the government that you control.

That should have been the fight back. And so I do think Democrats do have a little bit of a messaging problem. But I will also give you this little bit of encouragement, which is when we were in the full minority as Republicans, we had a messaging problem too. You always do when you don't have the presidency. It's hard. But yeah, a lot of it is you're up against a guy that has no desire to stick to norm.

and so he's just bulldozed everything. All right. Shirley from New Brunfels asks, if someone does say, okay, I don't like Trump anymore, instead of saying you voted for him so it's your fault, what do you say? I think the thing is this,

is like, I don't know if you necessarily have to say something. I think, you know, look, somebody that comes out and kind of is like, I shouldn't have done that. I regret my support for Trump. I do think it is important that they kind of show some version of contriteness, right? If they just come out and they're like, I don't like him anymore, you know.

Okay, I mean, good. I'm glad, you know, but like there needs to be a little bit of contriteness. But I think if somebody comes out and says, look, I don't like Trump anymore, I think it's important to be like, you know what? Awesome. Welcome to the coalition. You know, what can we do? Like, how can I?

Because keep in mind when people, imagine if you're a hardcore Democrat in here, imagine if tomorrow you lost that and you pulled yourself out of the Democratic Party and you lost your friends in the process, how would you feel alone? What would be the temptation to go back, right? We've all experienced this. I honestly believe nine out of ten adults would step in front of a train to save a toddler. I really believe that. But I think when you're talking about stripping your identity and your tribe, far less are willing to do that.

because we're tribal people. We need that protection. So I think the more, whatever it is, the more you can give them the reality or the understanding that there is a home for them, the more you reduce recidivism, to be honest with you. And to put it that way, I would say. Now, here's it, I will say real quick, Donald Trump's superpower, he will welcome anybody back once. Sam Stein could write tomorrow an article about how he was wrong and he loves Donald Trump and in three days he would be in the White House. honest to god right i could do the same thing once um don't give me ideas he said don't give me ideas um but that is a superpower that's why people come back but then he disciplines and says you never

cross me again anyway right all right thank you everybody appreciate it that's it thank you guys Thank you.