Bulwark Takes - Mark Kelly: 23 Million Americans Are About to Get Punched in the Face

Episode Date: October 28, 2025

Sen. Mark Kelly joins Sam Stein to warn that millions of Americans are about to get slammed with health-care hikes on November 1—and predicts Trump will melt down once the outrage hits his own supporters. Kelly also talks about the administration’s secretive military strikes in the Caribbean and what Democrats need to fix before 2026. Get free shipping and 365 day returns with Quince at https://Quince.com/BULWARKTAKES. #sponsored 

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please contact Connix Ontario at 1866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. But MGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. Hey, everybody. It's me, Sam Stein. I'm managing editor at the Bullock, and I am pleased to be joined by Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona. Thank you so much for doing this. Senator Kelly, really appreciate it. You are joining us. It's Tuesday. It's October 28th. It's 12, 15. About an hour ago, we got word that the United States has made another strike in the Caribbean. This time, four strikes, actually, with the reported 14 killed. Again, this is allegedly targeting drugboats, but we just don't know what's going on with respect to this operation. You were pretty outspoken over the weekend about what you think is dubious legality around this. And I'm just sort of curious if you can walk us through what actually you have been told by the administration and why you feel as skeptical as you feel about the legality of these operations.

Well, I sit on the armed services and the intelligence committees. We've been briefed on both of these strikes, obviously in a secure facility, so I'm not going to go into great detail on this. But, you know, I will say, let me start by saying, I think we all want the same thing. We do not want drugs coming into our country, especially fentanyl. But other drugs as well, cocaine or anything else that's getting trafficked from South America into the United States. So that's the goal. Traditionally, we've done this through law enforcement actions. The Coast Guard does this, sometimes in support with the Navy. Like the Navy can conduct some operations with Coast Guard people on board because they're law enforcement. What the

administration is doing, they have tried to explain to us how designating these groups as terrorist organizations allows us to just go and conduct kinetic strikes and kill them. I don't think I've seen anything like this. Well, I know I haven't in my lifetime. I spent 25 years in the United States Navy for us to make a decision that something is clearly a law enforcement action that the U.S. military is making a decision to just eliminate these people. We should arrest them. They should have an opportunity to defend themselves in court, and we should prosecute.

them to the fullest extent of the law when they released those two guys after the kinetic strike the two survivors what does that say either they weren't trafficking drugs or maybe they didn't they didn't feel like they had the legal authority to do that strike and decided to repatriate them back to the country so um well there's a third option too right which is they detain them and then somehow that would be the logical and but then somehow those those two detainees release some sort of information that is not what the administration wants out there in the public, right? The administration is not being transparent, not being transparent with the public. I know I can say this based on what I've been briefed, not being completely transparent,

and is trying to skirt the law on this. I know you can't get into what you've been brief, but when you say they're not being transparent, what are, can you speak in generalities about what they're not? Sure. So, yeah. Those routes from Venezuela to Caribbean islands are used to traffic cocaine, typically. Okay. I think the American people understand where most of fentanyl comes from.

The precursors come from China, sometimes into the U.S. and down into Mexico, and fentanyl pills come through the border. Right. Sometimes they come, you know, on boats, but that's often in the eastern Pacific on off the west coast of Mexico. Mexico, not through the Caribbean. It's not what we've seen typically. So what they're doing, it's also not fair to the members of the military that have to do this. Right. That have to pull the trigger. I've sunk, Sam, I've sunk two ships in my career during the first Gulf War as part of my 39 combat missions. I sunk a Osa II missile patrol boat in Kuwait Harbor. I sunk a Polnachni troop carrier off the Iranian coast, almost in Iranian waters. It was part of a war. We declared war

against Iraq for their illegal invasion of Kuwait. Not once did I say to myself, hey, I wonder if this is an illegal order to put these two ships at the bottom of the sea. It was never a question. As soon as we confirmed who this was, that this was the Iraqi military, I wonder what's going through. the minds of these guys? We don't know necessarily what's going through the minds of these guys, but what we do know is that the Admiral who was heading the U.S. Southern Command overseeing the military operations in the Caribbean, Alvin Holsey, he resigned, or he announced he was going to retire in December, in December 2025.

Yeah, he did not complete his term in that job. Which is incredibly rare. Very rare. Have you had any outreach with him? Do you plan on trying to have any outreach of them to get maybe a sense of, you? of what he saw or why he decided to retire? I've been trying to reach out to him. And have you been successful?

Not successful. Okay. Yeah. The other question that's kind of hovering overall this is why Venezuela. As you noted, it's not necessarily, probably not logically, the center for any sort of fentanyl trade, maybe for cocaine. But there is some recent data and reporting to suggest that the administration has had or people in the administration have had their eyes on regime change there.

And then we have this very sort of cryptic story that emerges yesterday from the Madera regime where they say, well, we saw we detained a covert CIA unit. I'm not going to put stock in necessarily what the Maduro regime is saying. But what is your sense or intuition about why this administration is so hell-bent on Venezuela and what maybe their overall or overarching goal is here? Hey, Maduro's a bad guy. He's incompetent. Chavez, they're both criminals to some extent.

I mean, they're not good people. And I do think it would be a positive thing to see regime change. But us trying to impose it on them, I think we've got to be really careful about that. Just think about recent U.S. history. South Vietnam, Cuba, you know, the Bay of Pigs, Iraq, Afghanistan, who's in charge in Afghanistan now, the Taliban, you know, the group that we tried to throw out and did successfully for a period of time. It costs a lot of American lives, cost a lot of money, you know, for us to do this. So our history with regime change is not good. Right.

The administration, you know, has said they would like to see somebody else, you know, running Venezuela. I would too. I just don't think this is the way you do it. And covert CIA operations as well, forcing it on a country is it's not making us more safe. But is that your sense of what they are trying to facilitate or is it something a little bit different? Like, for instance, access to oil or? Well, they, I mean, they're a bigger, they're a huge exporter of oil. They've got incredible energy reserves, but the administration hasn't said that.

They've talked about their, they've mentioned, you know, the regime change part of this. Which I just think is very short-sighted. You can't predict how these things are going to go. Yeah. And should we really be in the business of, you know, starting wars to kick. kick out leadership we don't like. I'd love to see Maduro go. Send in the Ford Battle Group to the Caribbean and flying B-52s and B-1Bs up and down the coast with the idea that at some point we might invade or start doing some kinetic strikes on land. That's an

escalation that I think just takes us in the wrong direction. So you are outspoken about this on the Republican side, Rand Paul's been extremely outspoken on this, taking a lot of arrows, in fact, from the administration over that. What is the actual likely role, if any, that Congress, assuming that the government reopens will play in trying to at least put some guardrails on this or manage it or authorize it? What do you see the role here for the Senate and for Congress? Well, we should have a vote on any kind of hostile activities we take against countries, especially when they go on for an extended period of time.

Should have a vote is different than we'll have a vote, obviously. That's right. And we won't have a vote. I don't think we'll have a vote. We could try to force a vote, like go unanimous consent on the floor, you know, goofy, Washington, you know, stuff like this, which is kind of a vote. We won't have one because the Republicans will not stand up to this president. They just won't. Rand Paul is a, you know, recent example, but he's on an island all by himself right now with regards to Venezuela. And they, many of my Republican colleagues, they lost their backbones in January this year.

Yeah. I want to switch to domestic stuff. The news last night that broke was that the administration is replacing a number of ice field officers with Border Patrol agents. Yeah, the sort of Cliff's Notes version of it is that this actually is likely to ramp up the type of activities that we've seen that have gone viral, confrontations in schools, around churches, Home Depot, things like that. One of the cities where the field officer has been replaces reportedly Phoenix, which is in your state of Arizona, I'm curious both for your thoughts on what's happening here and if you've gotten any explanation from the administration about what's to come in Phoenix. Well, I will say, you know, ICE is rather unpopular now, right, in a lot of different areas. I have good relationships with the ICE guys in the leadership in Phoenix and Tucson and Arizona and have worked with them.

The problem with this is you're now going to turn over a complicated operation to somebody who isn't trained to do this. ICE is actually trained to do this. They're overstepping their boundaries for sure and creating a lot of problems across the country. and mass deportations and ripping communities apart, they should not be doing this, but this is what this administration wants them to do. Right. Well, now the next step is,

if you start turning over some of this leadership to the Border Patrol, which is not trained in this work, I think you're going to have even more problems. And what we've seen is in conducting some of this immigration enforcement activities across the country, more of the problems happen when it's Border Patrol doing it. doing it. Bullwork takes is sponsored by Quince.

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That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com slash bulwark takes, free shipping and 365-day returns. Quince.com slash bulwark takes. I think people were kind of under the impression that the scenes coming out of Chicago was ICE Confrontations. It actually was more often than on Border Patrol confrontations, where they would send in these kind of Trojan horse operations and Home Depot's with Penske trucks and things like that. I'm assuming you've talked to local officials in Phoenix and elsewhere.

I mean, how are they prepping for this? Prepping for this change? Yeah. Or I guess for a ramp-up in operations in general. Yeah, we do not want to see what's happening in L.A. and, you know, Portland and Chicago happening in Phoenix. Right. You know, that's for certain.

And we're going to pay close attention to it. And, you know, I know the governor is, you know, thinking about this a lot. And Chris Mays is, too, our attorney general. And, you know, we're going to have a response if they start doing things that are against the law. And response being something legal, like what happened in Oregon where they said, no, you can't send in a national. If any federal government organization oversteps, it's legal authority, it is within the right of the state to file a lawsuit and contest. in the courts. And we will be prepared to do that. This is all happening, obviously, as the government remains shut down, as I alluded to.

There was some question about whether the federal workers union saying, hey, we need to resolve this, take the short-term continuing resolution because we're not getting paid and we have members literally in food pantries, whether that was going to move Democrats into supporting a clean continuing resolution. It's 24 hours later. It does not appear. here to have moved Democrats. Can you explain where the party's thinking is on this? Well, the president and his Republican minions in the Congress are holding the American people hostage, essentially, over their health care costs. They control the House, the Senate, the White House, and they've refused to negotiate on this. Mike Johnson has sent all his

Republican members on a six-week paid vacation to date. They have been back here in six weeks. They have abdicated their responsibilities under the Constitution. They do not go into session. They're not doing their jobs. Part of their job is to negotiate with us on how do we protect these families? There are 23 million Americans who on November 1st are going to get punched in the face with a skyrocketing health care bill. I've spoken to many of them in Arizona.

they're going to be people that are paying $250 or $300 are going to be paying $11 or $1,200. In some states, if you're of a certain age group, it's worse in Alaska. There are people, I talked to my colleague Lisa Murkowski about this because I heard about this kind of as I thought was kind of a rumor. And I said to Lisa, I said, hey, is it true that people are getting letters saying their health care premium is going to go up from $600 to $4,000 a month? month? No, come on. She said, yes, that is true, that people in Alaska are going to see those increases. We're going to see people with increases of 2, 300, 400 percent. Right. And these people

can't afford it. So they drop their health care. And then their one illness or injury away from bankruptcy or their kid. I mean, some of these families I've spoken to, their kids get their health care through the Affordable Care Act will have no health care insurance anymore. So the president is holding these people hostage. And it's because he gave that big giant tax cut to millionaires and billionaires. And this is the way he decided to pay for it. Yeah. I mean, well, so that's the Medicaid cuts. There's the health against Obama Care premiums. Those two things are at the forefront of the demands. When November first hits, how do you, and I hate to bring this back into the realm of politics, but because this is a standoff here,

how do you imagine that this changes the dynamics of this standoff, which is now it's real. People have actually gotten the letters in the mail saying your premiums are up 200%. Do you think that's going to encourage Republicans to say, okay, we will actually talk to you about some sort of way to elongate the enhanced Obamacare premiums? Yeah, I don't know what the president's exact schedule is, but he'll be back from this trip here in a few days. And then November 1st rolls around pretty quickly. And I imagine he's going to start hearing from people, people he knows.

And he, you know, he spends a lot of time on Twitter. So he's probably going to see on Twitter all this is starting to come out about how much people are going to have to pay and how it's going to affect his approval. And he's not going to be happy about it. And then all he needs to do is to tell John Thune to negotiate something and come up with a fix for this. He said he wanted to deal with this issue before he left. Actually, it was a few weeks before he left. He said he wanted to deal with it. So deal with it.

I mean, we all want the same thing. The only other thing I have to ask on the government shutdown is because it's sort of out there in the background. But for me, it's always difficult to see how Democrats can negotiate a deal with you. And even if you put aside health care, let's say you resolve it and you get some sort of deal, knowing that this administration believes in empowerment, knowing that it believes in rescissions, knowing that they're perfectly comfortable saying, okay, we cut a deal with you on a 60-vote threshold, but we're going to take back portions of that deal on a 50-vote threshold. I don't see how you can sign off on any deal without a commitment of some sorts for them not to do recisions. And yet that doesn't seem to be the main

point of emphasis for Senate Democrats in these negotiations. Sam, I mean, what can we trust this administration with. This is a guy who wants $230 million from the Treasury of the taxpayer's money. Well, I know. This is a guy who has, who has made billions of dollars off of mean coins and crypto and sneakers and is just grifting continuously on the American people now with a direct line right into the bank account of all the taxpayers at the Treasury. Give me $230 million. Of course, we can't trust them. I get that. But this is, this is a, an actual example of the administration saying, okay, thank you for the agreement we had. We're going to now undo it on a party line vote.

Is there not a way to get some sort of commitment from Thune or someone else to say, we will not pass a recisions package? You get a commitment from food? Yeah, well, they have to vote on it. Well, he, I mean, he does what Donald Trump lets them do. That's it. Same with Mike Johnson. They're not, they're not independent.

They're not independent actors at this point. So. All right. Last question. But we're going to keep fighting for the American people. all the way to the end of this administration. That's what we're doing now. We don't want to see people's lives ruined by these premium increases.

Fair enough. My last question for you is there's a new report out. Just gets at the same exact thing that Democrats have been dealing with, which is, did the party drift too far left? If not, maybe in policy, then in rhetoric. This report, which just came out, it basically. basically says that voter perceptions of Democrats have have basically evolved to the point where they believe that Democratic Party is just out of touch, that they emphasize non-economic

matters, that their focuses on things that don't actually materially benefit the voters themselves. You obviously are in the thick of it, and you, of course, were right there as a potential VP choice for Kamala Harris. And during that, you were regarded as a sort of like, you know, centrist-minded or at least, you know, common sense, national security guy. Just big picture. Like, where, how do you feel the party stands right now compared to where it was after the election loss? Do you think it's moving in the right direction?

And what kind of reforms or maybe rhetorical adjustments do you think still need to be made? Let me just start by saying, I don't like the crazy shit that the people all the way on the left say. And I don't like the crazy shit the people on the right set. Okay. Fair enough. And I think most of the American. American people are somewhere in the middle, and we can get a lot more accomplished folks in the middle

working together, Democrats and Republicans, you know, bipartisan. We do that in the Senate. It's actually done a lot more than people think because the controversial stuff is followed. I think we need more of that. And I think it's also important to recognize, you know, where do we win competitive elections. Like when elections are really competitive, it tends to be like moderates that win. So if you want to win competitive elections, stay away from the crazy stuff. Focus on the things that the American people care about. They care about their personal financial security and the security of their family. They care about their safety before anything else. You know, I spent 25 years in the Navy. I spent a lot of good amount of that time at NASA. People

kind of care about the space program, but it's way down the list. I mean, what are people, they really care about. I know you wish you were higher on the list. I wish it was higher. It's not in anybody's top three. It's not even in my top three. No, don't say that. I have to say that. I mean, what the American people care about is paying their rent and their mortgage and putting their food on the table, maybe taking their kids on a vacation, having health care, having a safe community to live in. And then maybe beyond that is making sure that we have a national security apparatus

that can keep our country safe and that we don't wind up in future wars. I think that's right. And they care about security, both domestically and abroad. I think more domestically than abroad. And they care about economic, you know, just they're plain economics.

I'm wondering, because it's become such a proxy for this debate, what's happening up in Maine with this Democratic primary now, Janet Mills, Graham Platner. You know, that is sort of a proxy for this debate, where this, where Grand Platteners kind of burst onto the scene making these arguments. And obviously, he's got a lot of controversial things in his bio that have surfaced recently. And then you have Janet Mills, who's got a great record, but also is considered old, frankly.

Well, great, yeah, but a great leader, well-known, experienced. Right. What is your take on that race, but also sort of the idea that, like, maybe we should be, Democrats should be, I should say, willing to overlook these kind of old Reddit posts and social media postings if the guy has the right message and can gin up a good audience and get people behind them. Well, I think people have to be accountable for, you know, things, you know, in their past, they say and they do. I think what it says about Maine right now and says about the country is there's a lot of enthusiasm. And in Janet Mills, we've got a, you know, great opportunity

there is also going to be a primary. Pretty clear about that. And the folks in Maine are going to have to make a decision on who they want to run against Susan Collins. Susan Collins has been pretty formidable. But I think right now is a real opportunity for a Democrat to win a seat in Maine. All right. Senator Kelly, thank you so much, man. Really appreciate it. I'm not going to tell anyone at NASA that they're not on your top three list, but it's okay. We'll figure it out. Yeah, thanks. Take care. Everyone's got a pro. Need tires? You've got a pro. Car making it a weird sound?

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