Chapo Trap House - Bonus: Virgil Interviews Cynthia Nixon

Episode Date: September 11, 2018

Virgil interviews Cynthia Nixon!

Hey everyone, this is Virgil Texas. With me on the phone is candidate for the Democratic Party nomination for governor of the state of New York, Cynthia Nixon. Ms. Nixon, thank you so much for joining us today. Hi. Hi, how are you? I'm good, how are you? Not bad, so I know your time is scarce, so let's get started. Ms. Nixon, thank you so. Thank you.

Ms. Nixon, thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you, it's a pleasure. You have been endorsed by the New York City, Buffalo, and Syracuse chapters of the Democratic Socialist of America. Earlier this summer, you said that you are a democratic socialist. I, too, am a socialist. Money of our listeners are as well. And I know that being a socialist means different things to different people. For some, it is a Nordic-style welfare state. For others, it is the liquidation of the capitalist class, the democratization of the means of production. So, Ms. Nixon, what does being a socialist mean to you?

Being a socialist, I would say is I am more in line with the Nordic model myself. But I think what it means is we have to stop letting profits be the determining factor for how we run our government and what our priorities are. We have to start electing people to office who aren't taking corporate money like I'm not taking in my campaign. And I think we have to really fight for turning the system upside down and that housing is a human right rather than a for-profit industry. That housing is a human right, that healthcare is a human right, that education is a human right, and that justice is a human right. And we're so far from that right now. I mean, certainly the influence of corporations and big money

in politics is nothing new. But we have arrived at a moment in our history of such unbridled corporate power where there is almost no daylight between the corporate agenda and between what our government's policies are. You've been an activist for many years. Three years ago, you raised money for Hillary Clinton, then running for president against a socialist. This year, you're running for governor as a socialist against a man endorsed by Hillary Clinton. What's changed in your political thinking in that period of time? What's changed for me is that I believe that we have to get serious about who we are as

Democrats and what our values are. And what I saw in that 2016 election was that we did not—people didn't understand what the Democratic Party stood for, and that's why they didn't turn out. There's a whole host of reasons. It's a very complicated picture of why they didn't turn out. But I think that we have to start getting back to the roots of the Democratic Party, and I think that there is a real civil war going on in the Democratic Party. And I think it's a good thing, because I think if we continue to go down the road that we're on right now, the Democratic Party is going to become more and more of an anachronism. If we just say, we're the Democratic Party, you should vote for us because we're Democrats

and we're a kinder and gentler, more diverse version of the Republican Party, nobody's excited about that. People are really looking for foundational change. Frankly, on both sides of the aisle, in both the Republican and the Democratic Party, we have very different ideas about how we would achieve that sea change. But I think that, frankly, why Donald Trump was elected, he was lying to people about what he was going to do about inequality, and he was doing it in a very racist, xenophobic way. But I think that he was really talking about inequality in a way that all of our politicians have to start doing because it is the number one thing that's happening in this country right now.

Earlier this year, you walked a picket line of striking graduate students at Columbia University. As an actor, I presume you've been a union member since your teens, is that right? I've actually been a union member since I was 12. I'm a member of four different unions, now a member of three because two of them merged. But yes, I've been a union member since I was 12, and my wife was a union organizer for a number of years. So how has being a union member for pretty much your entire life in the workforce, how has that impacted the way you think about labor issues?

So certainly, so many of the rights that working class people have won, have been won because of unions. I always love that bumper sticker that says, labor unions, the people who brought you the weekend. And when I look in the acting industry, certainly it's a job, it's very hard. You can make a killing, but it's very hard to make a living at for most people. And one of the reasons that so many actors are able to survive is because of our unions and what they've won for us in terms of residuals and participation in TV programs and movies that we've been in that when they get rerun, that we get a portion of that, we get a residual. And it's how most actors are able to survive in between jobs.

This year has seen Wildcat strikes by teachers across the country. As governor, you would be on the other end of the bargaining table with public sector unions. How do you demonstrate solidarity with union workers while being the state's top boss? So I've actually come out saying that I believe that public sector workers in New York should be given the right to strike, which they used to have, which was taken away when the Taylor Laws were enacted. I think we're in this moment of incredible attacks on our unions. Certainly the Janus decision was a devastating blow. And those Wildcat strikes were so important and they were happening in red states. They were incredibly inspiring, not just were teachers

striking for themselves and their families for a living wage and for benefits. They were also striking for their own students because education was so underfunded. I mean, students literally didn't have desks to sit at. And this is something that if you look at in New York state, because of the Triborough Amendment, because what we have now is contracts continue even after they've expired. It disincentivizes both the government and the labor leaders to sit down and have those hard discussions and fight out what the new contract would be. And the easiest way, I should say, for union leaders now to win better rights for their workers and better wages and benefits is by cozying up to politicians and making

politically expedient deals. And I think we need to return to labor unions the right to strike, public sector unions. And they will get a much greater degree of independence and be able to fight for their workers, not just through supporting elected leaders. On that note, I remember you have a platform that is to the left on labor issues, far to the left of Andrew Cuomo's, yet more pro-union and yet the major unions in the city, in the state, have come out to endorse him over you as an insurgent candidate who has just been suffering these attacks from the non-neutral state democratic party. Is the response to your candidacy what you expected? And has that changed your view of the state democratic

party? So, in terms of the attacks that have come out this weekend from the state democratic party, really disgusting attacks that were completely baseless, accusing me of not doing enough to fight anti-Semitism and somehow being complicit in that, it's shameful. I'm the mother of two Jewish children who were bar mitzvahed. We belong to a synagogue. My children's grandparents escaped the Holocaust narrowly and had a lot of family members who didn't. This is dirty, smear politics at its absolute worst at a time when anti-Semitism is on the rise to use it in this disgusting way untruthfully, fear-mongering and for political

reasons. I think it's really unforgivable for the New York state democratic party, but also let's be real. Andrew Cuomo controls the New York state democratic party and I blame him fully for this. And his really tepid press conference this weekend saying that this was inappropriate and a mistake, didn't even begin to cut it. He needs to come out and say 100% that this was wrong and this is untruthful and that all of these charges that have been leveled against me are completely baseless. More than presumably just voting for you, how should people go about reforming the state democratic party, turning it from what is essentially a machine, as you say, controlled

by Andrew Cuomo, to an actual democratic organization? Well, I think what we're seeing this year in 2018 is really inspiring. So we have a group of turncoat Democrats here in New York, Trump Democrats, you might call them, although they preceded Trump, who Andrew Cuomo has incentivized to vote with the Republicans, giving the Republicans the majority in the state senate when they didn't have it. Andrew Cuomo has allowed the Republicans in the state senate to gerrymander their own districts. And this group called the IDC, the independent democratic conference, has been one of the real dirty little secrets that's happening in New York that now is finally coming to

light with this year because of my campaign, because of Jomani Williams' campaign who's running for lieutenant governor, because of Zephyr Teachouts' campaign, she's running for attorney general, and most especially because these eight turncoat Democrats who have given over control of the Republican for their own personal gain and for all sorts of financial and political perks, each one of them is being challenged by someone to the left. Overwhelmingly, they're being challenged by women and people of color. And I think that this is an incredible moment in our state. And I think that we need to keep the heat on and we need our Democrats to really be real Democrats, not just corporate Democrats.

And we're doing a lot this year to rip the veil off of them and expose them for who they are and challenge them. And I think we're going to see a lot of people who are corporate Democrats who are going to be looking for a job come Friday. But we need to keep doing this. And as the DSA understands who has been so important in this progressive moment and these progressive challengers, this is not just a one-year or a one-season project. This is something that we need to keep doing because New York is such a progressive place. We have such a diverse and progressive voting base and we need to keep fighting and we need to create a New York state government that is as progressive as New Yorkers themselves.

I just have two more questions. I caught the one debate between you and Andrew Cuomo when I was quite impressed because you said to Cuomo's face, what the majority of New Yorkers want to say to him. Can you stop lying? Cuomo believes, yeah, as soon as you do. That's a great comeback, idiot. Cuomo believes he can be the candidate of Wall Street, the candidate of developers, and the candidate of working people all at the same time. Is he wrong? He is absolutely wrong. He is absolutely, he is the candidate of Wall Street. He is the candidate of corporations. He received so much Republican money. The Koch brothers gave him $87,000. Ken Langone, one of Donald Trump's big contributors, is also a great

contributor of his. Anthony Scaramucci, we all remember the mooch from his brief time with Donald Trump's press person, spokesperson, was the head of Republicans for Cuomo. You look at how much money Andrew Cuomo was receiving from wealthy individuals, from corporations, from Republicans with Republican agendas. You see why New York is so lagging behind on almost every progressive issue that we have here, that we could have enacted, whether you're talking about passing the New York Dream Act or the Reproductive Health Act, whether you're talking about real campaign finance reform, voting reform. We have some of the least democratic voting laws in the entire country, whether you're talking about

legalizing marijuana or ending cash bail in our state or fully funding education or fully funding infrastructure, rescuing the New York City subway, providing greater public transportation to upstate where so many people are living in transportation deserts now because of gentrification and because people are being pushed farther and farther out. But even in these things where you would think that Andrew Cuomo, who has lately started railing against Trump and trying to be his number one opponent, there is so much more that we could be doing to protect our immigrants here, but like signing an executive order to expand access to driver's licenses, that's the number one thing I will do when I enter office because

our undocumented New Yorkers not having a driver's license is leading them completely vulnerable. It's the way that ICE is coming into our communities, racially profiling people, figuring out who's undocumented, tearing families apart and turning New York into a police state. There's so much that we can do here and we need to keep at it. And this year is a really important year. I think we're going to see a lot of upsets. My last question, Julia Salazar, whom you endorsed earlier this year, told the Intercept, quote, sex workers are workers and they deserve to be treated with dignity, including protections and decent working conditions rather than the abuse and criminalization that they currently

face. Do you agree or disagree? I think that, I think whether when you're talking about sex workers and whether they have voluntarily gone into that work, I think that we need much greater protections for them. And I also think, of course, you have sex workers who are, who have been trafficked and who are desperate to escape. I think we need both of these things. But yes, absolutely. I think that any time you can take something that is illegal and allows people to be preyed upon, we have to take a hard look at legalizing it and whether that would be an overall plus. Certainly in the case of marijuana, we know that it is. And sex workers, I think it's

not anything that I have issued a formal statement on, but I definitely think it's something that when I'm governor, I would look at. Cynthia Nixon, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. It was a pleasure talking to you. You too. Best of luck to you this week.