Bulwark Takes - Senator Who Served With JD Vance Explains Why He’ll Never Be President (w/ Sen. Schatz)

Episode Date: October 13, 2026

Sen. Brian Schatz joins Sam Stein to explain why Democrats suddenly have a shot at winning Senate races in deep-red states, how they plan to hold Trump’s corrupt officials accountable, and why he doubts JD Vance has what it takes to succeed Trump. From the possibility of impeaching Trump administration officials to Vance’s struggle to connect with MAGA voters, Schatz offers an unusually candid look at what comes next.

Hey, everyone, it's me, Sam Stein, managing editor at the Borg. And I am joined by Senator Brian Schatz of Hawaii, who is the, well, not quite yet, the second in line among the Democrats. But he will be trying to, I presume, and he is grateful. I'm grateful that he's joining us here on Friday morning to talk about the midterms, the party, what could happen next year and so on so forth. Senator, thanks for doing this. Appreciate it. Happy to be here. Thanks, Sam.

All right. So let's just jump right into it. Democrats look like they're in a better place from a Senate perspective than they were even just a couple months ago. I'm going to start very general and broad. What is your sense a couple weeks from the election about how things will go? And what do you think is the biggest thing that has changed over the past couple months if you put the Iran war aside? Well, look, I don't trust happiness. So, you know, the data is encouraging.

And the vibes are, you know, usually if there's some reason to be concerned, it would be like the data and the vibes are not matching up. But right now what we're hearing anecdotally, the polling data, the sort of way people are moving around campaigns, seems to be that we've got a significant amount of momentum. But the problem is for the Senate, we've got a significant amount of momentum in a bunch of red states so that, you know, if it ends up that we fall short,

everyone's going to have this after the fact explanation, like, well, that was obvious. How could we win Kansas? But the truth is, I'm pretty bullish on Kansas. The truth is that I am feeling increasingly optimistic. And I think the challenge for this sort of this generation of people who are engaged in politics is to engage in it as a participant as opposed to a fan. You know, I watch football, I watch basketball.

and I'm a fan, right? And I root for my team and I have fantasy teams and I read about it and the athletic and the ringer and this and that. But like it's not participatory. And I think that there's an aspect of politics now where you just sort of watch the shows and listen to the pods and maybe check social and root for your side. And I think it's really important for everybody to remember the last three and a half weeks is about actually the extent to which everybody participates in some form or fashion. Give money, talk to your relatives, make an argument online.

I don't actually, I'm not telling people exactly what to do or where to do it, but just a reminder that this is, this does require your active participation. It's not enough to just be rooting for us. You could just make a bet on Kalshi or something like that, right? Yeah. Okay. You mentioned giving money.

I mean, that was obviously the big issue facing Democrats. I mean, I think we can all agree that the vibes are good, the issues are trending in the Democratic Party's direction, certainly the polls look good. The sort of big variable, the one thing that was kind of hanging over the party's head, has been money in part because there's a huge amount of mega donors on the Republican side who have thrown hundreds of millions of dollars into these political action committees. Are you concerned about that? Not on the low end side, I think Democratic candidates are doing fine, but on the big donor side.

Yes, I am. And the challenges that I would say in the last like three or four weeks, two things have happened. They're both good, but one of them creates a money crunch. The first is that we actually had a pretty big infusion to candidates and non-candidate committees that got us at least a little closer to parity between our side and the Republican side. We're never going to be at parity just because they have basically unlimited money. But we had enough to get our message out. Now, here's the high-quality problem that happened basically simultaneous to that, is that suddenly we're competitive in Kansas.

We're clearly competitive in Texas and Iowa and potentially Mississippi and South Carolina. And so the challenge is that we would be close to parity in terms of spending if it were for the fact that now we have to figure out a way to be really competitive in case this really is a wave. And remember, you know, the way we got Heidi, Heidi. camp, the way we got John Tester, the way we got Joe Donnelly is a big year and at least enough funding in those states so that the campaigns could sort of, you know, grab a surfboard paddle and catch the wave. They're not going to get $100 million in the next three weeks, but they could get enough to be competitive on TV. And if it is a blue wave across the country, they can ride it too. Yeah. Well, I mean, I have to presume that people like you and Chuck Schumer

and every luminary is calling a major donor and making that exact case. One of the things that's kind of complicating this is that, at least last time we talked, a lot of those big donors don't want to have their names out there. I mean, they literally don't want the retribution. They don't want the target on their back. Is that still a factor? I mean, it's always a factor because I think it's fair to characterize this administration as punitive and keeping score.

But I also think that, you know, people are starting to realize that the president, is deeply unpopular and very likely to lose one or both chambers. And so if you're not an ideological donor, if you are a person who is just trying to make sure that your interests are represented in the government, they are making a calculation that is different than it was before. And so, yeah, I think things are shifting. I think the ground is shifting underneath everybody,

and there's sort of a realization that maybe the country, is finally fed up with all of this. Last time we talked was a year ago, and we were focused on a particular act of corruption from the Trump administration. I'm wondering if you recall what it was. I do not. I have no recollection,

and it's probably just been overtaken by the most recent 12 acts of corruption. I don't know. What was it? It was the Qatari Jet. Oh, yeah. That's still, I would say, ranks in the top 10, most corrupt actions.

I was going to go with like 13 to 15, something like that. Yeah, yeah. Well, it's pretty, it's just big, and it is a foreign government, and it is explicit. So I'm putting it into the top 10. It has foreign policy implications. It's quite bad. Okay, top 10, fine. It lends the question that I really want to ask, which is, so there's just so much to look at from an oversight role.

And presuming that, you know, certainly the House will get Democratic leadership, but the Senate potentially, and that you guys will have, real responsibilities to conduct oversight investigations. How do you go about kind of prioritizing these things, knowing that there's a lot of stuff to look into? Well, look, I think it's a bit of kind of like, there's some pundit brain out there that's like, are you going to do investigations and accountability, or are you going to move forward as a country?

And like, I just think we should reject the premise. We're clearly going to need some accountability and some amount of oversight. that's part of the reason that people want us to be in charge is to try to be an institutional check against them. However, I think it's fair to say that people don't want us waking up every morning thinking about how we're going to screw Donald Trump. They want us thinking about how we're going to reduce everyone's prices.

But like, I don't know, that took me 12 seconds to explain. Why are we assuming we can't do both things? I do think we are... I don't think you can't do both things. My question is there are so many things to look at. Oh, where to start? Yeah, where do you start? Yeah, I mean, look, I think the corruption that has foreign policy implications,

I think the corruption that is like straight up grift and graft has to be prioritized. And I also think, you know, one of my colleagues made this point. It's pretty important for it not to just be about people everyone has heard of because that gets the clicks. Like there is some pretty significant corruption at the deputy assistant secretary level. And I think the reason that everyone ought to be thinking about that is that as a prophylactic for the future, to prevent people from conducting themselves in a corrupt way, they should not be thinking, well, only if my last name is Trump or only if I'm, you know, I got a certain number of Instagram followers, am I even going to be noticed with my corruption?

I think there should be a message across the government, not that we're going to punish anyone who worked for the Trump administration, but that we are a country of laws and not of men, and that if you committed an actual federal crime that as long as the statute of limitations has not run, that you should probably get a lawyer. And I think that that's a pretty good message to send across the government because it wasn't just people whose last name were Trump. it sort of was a tone that was set and therefore lots and lots of people were engaged in corrupt actions like throughout agencies and I think we ought to focus on that. The other thing I'd say is that on the impeachment question. I need mass impeachment, but yeah, bring it. But like it's there. It's there.

Look, I don't think anybody thinks that the president will be successfully removed from office this third time if there's a third impeachment. And so I think Democrats have to be pretty precise and pretty cautious about that on the House side. But I do think we could put Republicans in a particularly difficult position if there are impeachments of other officials who have committed high crimes and misdemeanors against the United States of America. I think that feels to me, if I'm a regular voter as if it is calibrated appropriately, that feels to me as if it is striking the right balance between kind of moving forward and having some sense of accountability. We know what the Supreme Court is going to say about presidential immunity, and we know what the Senate Republicans are going to say about removing him from office.

So we've seen that movie before. We may have to see it the third time, whether we like it or not, but I don't think that's going to get anybody excited. And I think that just becomes red shirts, blue shirts. And I am interested in moving forward. The one thing I'd add is that we have to be really direct with people about what we think we can accomplish in the next two years if we do take power. And I think we can reverse these Medicaid cuts. I think we can help to precipitate an end to the war. And I think we can get these tariffs under control, although the third one is probably even more difficult. But I don't think we should promise the world while we're talking about a divided government. People understand what a divided government means, and if they give it to us,

we should behave as if the government is divided and not like we just won the whole thing. I want to get back to why tariffs are the third one that is difficult. But before we do that, there's like a quasi-contradiction in what you said. I want to just push on. So you're like, well, we need to do aggressive oversight and hold these people accountable on the lower level because they need to know that there is accountability and that they may have to lawyer up and they can't just get away with impunity. But we're also very clear-eyed about, like, the president. We can't get him done.

Like, shouldn't he have, like, a little bit of fear that he could get impeached to? Well, I think he, I think the problem, Sam, is that we did that twice and it was unsuccessful. It's not to say that, look, look, if the House sends over the articles of impeachment, depending on what the articles say, you know, I think it's almost algorithmically predictable. how many Democrats would vote. My practical point of view is that even Democrats want us to be a little more strategic this time and not just wake up every morning sort of in the anti-Trump froth. Everyone is in an anti-Trump froth.

So now people are wondering what comes next, and that's our job. Sure. On the tariffs, let's go to those. And then we can talk a little bit more by the Democratic General at large. Are you saying that the tariffs are going to be a little bit tougher to move because, and let me guess, informed by some conversations I've had with Democrats that there's some tariffs they kind of like.

Maybe not the Canadian, maybe not the Canada ones, but they're not like, I don't think you guys are like, you know, eager to just suddenly be, you know, hey, these China tariffs, we're going to get them off, right? Like there's some interesting politics here. Biden kept the first term Trump, China tariffs on. Well, look, I don't come from a manufacturing state, so I don't have those equities. That is actually not why I was thinking that there was going to be difficult. but I will just say that some of the politics around tariffs are scrambling, right?

You now have the Democratic Party voter base that is more inclined towards free trade and more opposed to tariffs than the Republican voter base. And so one thing that Trump did sort of helpfully to the Republican coalition is scramble the regular ideological assumptions. But I also think that that cuts in the other direction. And now there are a bunch of people going, why do I mean, look, I shop at Walmart, I shop at Costco. go, how come I got to pay more?

And how come when the refunds go, they go to the people that I already paid more to. And so, look, tariffs are a tool in the toolkit, but just like every other tool in the toolkit that the president has command over, he's mishandled it all. All right. So on the sort of broad picture Democratic agenda, you talked about reversing the Medicaid cuts, ending the war in Iran, you know, those are sort of premised on the end. idea that you can get the president to sign legislation, whether it's a war authorization bill or a reversal of the cuts. It's hard for me to imagine a universe where that exists, but it's not

impossible for me to imagine. He might have some sort of appetite for that. Like, how do you see this playing out? And are those the main two priorities? Or are there other ones that you think are going to be emphasized come January? Well, I think one where there's a real opportunity is, is, delaying these cuts in snap. And the snap and the Medicaid cuts sort of have the same political coalition emerging to say, hey, give us a little breathing room, which is to say red states, red legislatures saying, this is hurting our grocery stores, this is hurting our citizens, this is hurting our farmers, this is hurting our health care infrastructure.

And so, you know, there's a quiet conversation about already punting these snap cuts. among Republicans and Democrats. And so, yeah, I mean, I picked things that were realistic but meaningful because I think one of the difficulties, once you get into the presidential, is everyone wants to be, you know, describing a new vision for the United States of America. And I think that's a very appropriate thing for a presidential candidate to do. But if we take only one chamber or even if, knock on wood, we take both chambers, it's still a divided government.

And so we have to find those opportunities for bipartisanship. and I think the kind of bipartisanship that may be available to us that is not available right now is the kind where people say, wow, we just got our butts kicked in the midterms on the question of the price of everything. Maybe we should do something about the price of everything. Yeah, that would make some sense. This is all happening sort of as there's a kind of like secondary conversation that I'm sure really agitates you to no end about what the Democratic Party is, what its message should be. Is it drifting too far to the center in moderation?

Should they round out? I mean, it's like a classic democratic inter-party fight. And it seems the timing is a little bit inopportune. I'll grant you that. But like, let's say you ran into a constituent who's sort of sorting it out, watching this fight progress and just wants to make sense of it. And you had 30 seconds to talk to that person who, you know, maybe not particularly engaged in politics.

What do you tell them is the Democratic Party? We're the party that gives a shit about regular people and what they're going through. And we're the party that believes that the government can do something about that and at a minimum not make things worse. The other thing I'd say is that if you are interested in the inter-party, intra-party fighting, just punt it to November. There's like 23 months out of every two-year period where you can have these fights. And I've been in these fights. I like these fights. I'm attracted to these fights.

You like these fights? Well, I don't like it strategically, but I'm like, I have pundit brain too, so I sort of, you know, I can't help myself. But the point is to be disciplined enough to say, look, like, there's a minute and 45 seconds left in this football game, and we're down by a field goal, and we've got the ball on there 25. And so the question is not, should we swap out our offensive coordinator or should we become a run first team now? The question is how do we execute? And executing means that everybody take off their pundit hat, right? Take off their analytical hat and start to campaign. In whatever way that makes sense for you, but, you know, there's an old, there's an old

Obama documentary about his Iowa campaign. And Paul 2's his manager in Iowa just start screaming, finance walks doors, the manager walks doors, the candidate knocks doors, everyone's knocking doors. And it was the last day. And the point is, there's nothing left to. do in the headquarters. There's nothing left to strategize about. We are in the phase of this where it is entirely about voter contact and there should be clarity about this. And I think the thing that's happened, you know, between the sort of bulwark, if you will, center-right folks. I know that's

not you, but you know what I'm trying to say. And the leftists in this coalition is like, coalitions that win make no sense. Coalitions that win are uncomfortable. Coalitions that win are uncomfortable. coalitions that win have disagreements internally. If you want perfect alignment, you are going to be a 43% of the public political party. And part of what we are experiencing now is when we say Big Tent, we mean it in both directions. We mean center right and we mean even more left than some center left people like. And you know what? I want to win.

I want hardcore leftists and I want center right, you know, Reagan Republicans and everybody in between. because it's all hands on deck, not just for democracy, but just to give people to give people some relief in terms of their personal financial situation. All right, I got three questions left. There are about three individual people. One's a Democrat, two are Republicans. I'll let you choose which one you want first. Give me the Democrat first.

All right, Democrat first. If things go well and the Democrats take the Senate, Chuck Schumer is going to be in line to be majority leader, except for the fact that you do have a couple candidates in races like Troy Jackson and Abdul al-Sayed who say they won't support Schumer if they win in November. You obviously are an ally of Schumer. You're in leadership. What's your case for Schumer to these folks? Look, I think everybody gets to do whatever they want to do when it comes to that caucus vote. That's the first thing. And the main thing is to get people into the United States Senate and then we can sort out the rest later. That's the kind of main thing. But I would say that we probably would not be

in this position with Sherrod Brown and with Mary Peltola and with Roy Cooper and with sort of just across the country what I would consider to be a lot of recruiting success. And at least we're at something. You left out Adam Hamilton. What's that? Adam Hamilton. I'm not sure we recruited him or not. I don't know who recruited whom. All I'm saying is that what matters is whether or not we're in a position. to win back power. And we can sort out the, okay, well, if we win power, then who's our leader and who's our whip and who chairs judiciary?

And all those very interesting and important questions. I think he's going to have the votes. I have not done any counting on his behalf. But I think that if we have a successful election, then I think there's going to be a lot of opportunity for movement and opportunity for change. And I think everyone would be, well positioned to have that conversation after the election.

Okay. First Republican question for you. Susan Collins, you serve on the Appropriations Committee with her. She is the chair of the committee. She's had this pretty straightforward argument for a horror election campaign. It's basically like whatever you think of Washington, whenever you think of Donald Trump, I have seniority on this committee.

I'm bringing home a lot of projects. I'm alleviating some of the burdens of the trade wars with Canada. And I've delivered billions to the state of Maine. what's wrong with that argument? Well, I just think people are really struggling because of the Medicaid cuts, because of the snap cuts, because of the tariffs, because of the Iran War. And people understand that is because of unified Republican control of the government. And so I think the voters in Maine are going to have to decide whether they want

Democrats in control of the United States Senate or they want Republicans. in control of the United States Senate. And so there are those years where you don't think your selection on the United States Senate general election is going to determine who controls the legislature federally in Washington. But this is one of those instances where if you hate what's going on, then you have an opportunity to switch who's in charge of the United States Senate. And I think that's the case that Troy Jackson is making. and you can make that case, right, while still conceding that Susan over time has been well regarded by the people of Maine.

But I think the question for the people of Maine is, do you still want Republicans in charge given everything that's going on? Okay. Last question for you. No longer United States Center, but someone you did serve with, J.D. Vance. Yeah. He is obviously going to be the inheritor of Mac. I don't know if he's going to be the only one who's striving for that title, but he's positioning himself as it.

You've taken the temperature of the guy. I mean, it was a brief overlap in the Senate. But does he scare you as a political animal? Is he someone who you think is underappreciated for his political acumen? And how do you imagine things going for him? I mean, look, I've been predicting incorrectly at the federal presidential level for a while. Yeah, but you just were touting your pundit brain. You got to, you know, I have it, but that made it.

By the way, pundit brain doesn't mean right. Often wrong. I'm just confident. Yeah. So, look, I do not think, I think J.D. is going to have enough of the infrastructure to get the nomination, but none of the Jews to win the president. right? I mean, the infrastructure helps you in a series of primaries, early states and, you know, money and super PACs and all that stuff. But my own feeling is that he's not going to have any kind of cultural connectivity with the MAGA base beyond the kind of like super loyal folks who will simply do whatever Donald Trump asks him to do. So I just don't know that he's saying.

Why do you feel that way? Is it based off of your time with him or is it just observation? I don't know that he's yet, you know, even in his middle age, yet comfortable in his own skin. And I think that is something that you need to be if you're going to be president of the United States. I think people maybe even unreasonably like over index on the question of like, does this person feel comfortable in their own skin? And he just very clearly doesn't. And he keeps trying on different skins. And he acts different in different places still. And so there's this element of like speech and debate club guy who got like shot up like a, you know, like a rocket ship to the almost the highest tier in the United States federal government.

Very talented, very smart. But I think still not settled in terms of like, who am I? What do I actually believe in? And what am I here to do? And I think that that really undermines any presidential candidate on either side of the aisle. Thank you for doing this. I really appreciate it. I hope this was not too painful and that you come back sooner next time.

Thanks, Sam. Appreciate it. All right. Take care of center shots. For everyone who watched, I appreciate that as well. As always, subscribe to the feed where you get great stuff like this. We actually have a 30% off deal for the bulwark on Substack. It's ending on Sunday, I believe.

Might be wrong about that. But check it out if you can and if you are interested in getting stuff like this. Take care.