IHIP News - Dems Have Trump Scared for What’s Coming! with Rep. Jared Moskowitz

Episode Date: May 7, 2025

Jen and Pumps sit down with Rep. Moskowitz to discuss the Democrats plan of action against Trump.Pre-order our new book, join our Patreon Cult, and more by clicking here: https://linktr.ee/ivehaditpodcast.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

We thought we needed to do a little check-in with what's going on in Congress, so we're happy to welcome Congressman Moskowitz to IHIP News today. Congressman, how is work going? How's your job? Everything's fine. What do you know that I don't know about? Everything's good. Coworkers are good? Am I getting a letter that you know something's going to happen? How about your co-workers? Marjorie Taylor Greene? Nancy Mace? Marge Marge? Oh, she's fabulous.

She literally is Marge Marge from, I don't know if you remember Pee Wee's Big Adventure, where the garbage truck dropped off the Empire State and her eyes pop out of her head. literally is marjorie taylor green you're like drinking your coughing and she just yells you're a communist like while you're like walking in the hallway look in the hallway and you're like i just like sugar in my coffee marjorie does she stay in character all the time like are we are we full tilt that elevator everywhere? 100%. And that's what makes Marjorie like different than a lot of the other people up here is that is her 100% of the time. A lot of these folks you can like have a conversation with, you can try to figure out like, oh,

what do we have in common? Well, even though we yell at each other in committee and with Marjorie, none of that. She, I mean, she has conviction about her craziness. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, no, that's, that is her. She, she was, she has conviction about her craziness. Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah. No, no, that's, that is her. She was born that way. Okay.

So here's, I mean, here's the thing. We live in Oklahoma City. All right. And so we've always kind of leaned on the federal government to kind of protect the worst impulses of Christian nationalists that run our state. Well, you know, that isn't going so well. And so what can you tell our viewer and our listener? Is there any plan to help try to thwart some of these worst impulses of authoritarianism that Trump and his administration are hell-bent on implementing?

You know, look, we're doing that every day in Congress, in the House, in the Senate, you know, but we have to also face the reality, right? We don't have the House, we don't have the Senate, we don't have the presidency, and we don't have the Supreme Court, although some of the rulings have gone our direction. And so it's all about getting the American people engaged.

It is going out to a protest, it is going out to a town hall. It is bringing your voice. I would tell you the pressure the American people have put on is getting them to think twice about, you know, cutting people's Medicaid. And so we have to understand that there are limited tools in the toolbox as far as doing it, you know, in Congress and doing it in the Senate. We're fighting back in committee. We're going to TV cameras. We're going on podcasts like this one. Right. And we're engaging with the American people. And so and so I think it's important to go out there, uh, and, and do that. And also, right. This is not what the American people signed up for, right? Like, I feel like Trump was like, you know, we're all going to the golden age, right. And everyone like literally they were just like, they scrolled down. They didn't read the terms and conditions. They pushed accept.

And we like moved on. And now it turns out in the golden age, everything is the price of gold. You only get two dolls and zero Elmo's. And at the end of the day, people are like, what's going on? My stock portfolio isn't what it should have been. My pension is is in jeopardy. Right. And, you know, now we're talking about we're not going to be able to buy stuff for Christmas. I thought he solved the war on Christmas only to relaunch it very ironic of course and so people are confused about what's going on out there uh not the greatest 100 days uh for the American people let me ask you this so you have you see rallies and protests from normal people that are forming alliances to protest in the street to try to save our country.

And you see that, you know, they pop up, it seems like every 10 days or so. What I haven't seen, and what I think needs to happen to help your co-workers on the other side of the aisle, are Fortune 500 companies, CEOs, standing on the steps of Congress to apply pressure. Because I think all of these CEOs played a very short-sighted game. They thought, oh, we're going to kiss the ring. Trump's going to make us richer. What Trump is doing is dismantling the American brand in such a cascading way that look at what Jeff Bezos, look at how that paid off for him.

He's facing boats from China that are half empty now. Look at Elon Musk's stock price. Look at what Tim Cook's having to deal with these tariffs. So this short-sighted approach that a lot of these billionaires played, thinking that Donald Trump was a good playmate for them, is already proving to be problematic. Do you think if, I mean, 25, 50, Fortune 500 CEOs stood on the steps of Congress and called on your Republican colleagues to put some safeguards and some guardrails against this authoritarian play and against these attempts to dismantle the American brand and the American economy. Would that have an impact on them? Or are they just so far deep into the cult that it's Trump no matter what?

Well, look, you know, we're going to have to see if some of the Republican members are willing to stand up, right? And I'm not going to hold out hope on any of the words they say until they do it. I mean, we did say, see Tom Tillis yesterday say that he's not going to vote for Ed Martin to be the D.C. attorney here because he did all the J6 stuff. So that's the first Republican to say, I'm not voting for one of Trump's nominees. Let's see if it sticks. But that is what he said. So that is the first maybe domino to fall here. As far as the CEOs, I love that idea. I think you saw the titans of industry say to themselves, we just need to survive the next four years. So let's go. Let's try to curry favor and see if that works.

I've seen other people come out and say, tell the truth. I've seen major, you know, folks that are on Wall Street. Ken Griffin came out and talked about really what the tariffs are doing. You've seen another a couple of other billionaires that are in the finance world be very honest about the tariffs in China, what it's going to do to prices, that that is a tax increase on the American people. And so, you are starting to see exactly what you're talking about. It may not happen where we get 50 at once, it may be more of a slow drip over time, but

you're going to start to see people start to tell the truth. I think we need 50 at once. I think, this is what I see, all of these people are wealthy because of all of these people that are protesting right now. They are the manifestation of the American dream. Yeah, maybe some of them inherited some money, but some of them are self-made. And this is such a threat. This is so dangerous. The shit that this man is doing day in, day out, the stuff that he's normalizing, the propaganda on the White House social media page is so abhorrent. You're not voting for him for Pope?

I mean, I saw that and I literally went out and bought a white smoke and I was like, it's done. It's done. Here we go. I have a question kind of along those same lines of pressuring Republicans. You've got the U.S. House of Representatives has a new election in 2026. You see these Republicans going to town halls and they're getting destroyed. You see that they're on Fox News saying it's Democratic plants. Am I just the eternal optimist that I think as we get closer to 2020, 26, when these people, they know they're not Democratic plans. Will they start voting against Trump's agenda at that point because they're afraid of losing their seats? Oh, it's a great question. Right. And this is where

you'll you'll get into like political analysis. I would tell you at this moment in time, they're more afraid of Donald Trump and a primary challenge than they are of their general election. And that's even the moderates in these moderate seats. So maybe as we get closer, right, to next year, to a Speaker Hakeem Jeffries, which, you know, going back to your previous conversation, the most important thing Democrats can do right now is not fight each other, is to unite and to make Hakeem Jeffries the Speaker. That is the most important thing Democrats can do right now is not fight each other, is to unite and to make Hakeem Jeffries the speaker. That is the most important thing.

Anytime we're fighting with each other or trying to find purity rather than power, right, we get away from making Hakeem Jeffries speaker. Because making him speaker is the brakes that we can put on the Trump administration. Yes, it's 18 months down the road. And yes, we got to do a lot of stuff before then. But that is how we limit four years of this. I want to jump in, though. And this is where I think a lot of elected politicians are not listening to their base. The reason part of the reason that the Democratic polling is so low right now is because of a lackluster response from Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer. And you guys are all in the beltway, but out here, people are very disappointed with the opposition that's been put up by the two of them. And part

of it is we don't see the Democrats fighting enough. And you hear Hakeem Jeffries allow Jerry Connolly to the torch to be passed to a man who had cancer, who's a million years old, and pass over AOC. And AOC and Bernie are out there getting tens of thousands of people everywhere they go. Who else did that four years ago? Donald Trump went and campaigned and had thousands of people show up and guess where he is right now? He's sitting in the oval. So I feel like there is from establishment politicians that are out there right now. It's like, don't fight with others. But it's like, we feel like sometimes you're not fighting for us. And we're just supposed to tuck our tail between our legs and go along with Hakeem Jeffries, who botched the

leadership with Jerry Connolly. We all are back sitting here watching going, this guy isn't the man of the moment. I'm sure he's a nice guy. I'm sure he believes in good causes. That wasn't the guy to oversee, to be on the oversight committee of Donald Trump. And so I take issue with some of the messaging that you just gave because you're not listening to, I've been a registered Democrat forever. I have thought about changing it to being an independent. My husband hates the Democrats right now. I'm talking a man who has died hard, never voted for a Republican in his life, changing his voter ID to independent. So that kind of messaging is just not penetrating with a lot of us. Let me push back a little bit on that. First of all, separate Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer.

Hakeem Jeffries got his entire party to vote against the CR. I was the first Democrat to come out and vote against this, to say I was voting against the CR. Hakeem Jeffries knew that that was the play. Chuck Schumer went a different route. So let's separate them in fairness to Hakeem Jeffries. That's number one. Number two is Hakeem Jeffries has to become speaker, right? Chuck Schumer in 26 has no path really to get back to the majority in the House. It's a different play. OK. And you don't become speaker in the hundred progressive seats. I'm just being honest with you. If it's not this progressive, it's another progressive. You become speaker in the 20 moderate seats, seats that Trump won in. And so Hakeem has to have a strategy to win those seats while making sure we're fighting against all of these things.

And so, look, I understand the Democratic polling. There's a lot of reasons why we're there, some of which, to be quite honest, we weren't honest with what was going on with Joe Biden. And we're being punished for that, okay, and rightfully so. It isn't just what's happened in the last hundred days. It's what happened, how we got Donald Trump back as president. OK. And so, look, you're right about what's going on in the streets. You're right that people are not happy with what's going on in Washington. AOC and Bernie are getting tons of crowds. We tried the Bernie thing. That isn't going to go anywhere. AOC is one of our best communicators. No question about it. Immensely talented. Okay. I think she should have been at the head of oversight and I'm disappointed that she's not

running now. She announced that she's not running, right? AOC and I don't agree on every policy issue together, but I do know that she is one of our best communicators, if not the best. And in that position, in oversight, you need your best communicator, right? Now, look, they're not even having committee hearings in oversight anymore. They're barely having them. My good old friend, James Comer, as you remember me fighting him for the last two years, right? But they're not even really having meetings there anymore because they're so afraid to give us the opportunity in front of the tv cameras to talk to the american people so you know look i'm really upset and sad for jerry i lost my dad to pancreatic cancer okay and so what's happening with jerry is absolutely terrible but the one

thing i will say about this there is something that needs to happen in the democratic party which is with the torch has to be passed in some of these races, right? It's time to get to new messengers because the way we message has totally changed. Donald Trump has changed that, okay? And Democrats, you know, have to take a little page out of there. How do you communicate? You got to go on podcasts. You got to go in alternative media. You can't just do the talking points on MSNBC, talking to your echo chamber. And yeah, you got to be a little tougher. You got to be a little rough around the edges. You got to be authentic and get out of the DNC talking points. And so, yes, we need to have more messengers. And those messengers have to run the

gambit. We can't just have our 20 strongest messengers be progressive. We have to have 10, 15 messengers that can win these D plus one, D plus two seats. I'm in a D plus two seat. AOC message doesn't work in my district. Right. Right. And so we got to make sure that while we're fighting for the things that Democrats have always cared about and pushing back against the things that the Trump administration is

doing, we have to stay focused on winning. We can't get lost on the fact that we got to win. We are where we are because we're not winning. That has to be the most important thing. And so like when I saw James Carville and David Hogg going back and forth, what I heard from David Hogg is we got to get better messengers. Okay. And we got to figure out how to message in today's day and age.

And what I heard from James Carville said, okay, but we also have to win. And so I would take both of those messages Carville said, okay, but we also have to win. And so I would take both of those messages together, which is yes, while we fixed our messaging, let's not lose sight that we got to win. What do you think about the, as you look at how Donald Trump won, he goes to people where they feel, they feel angry, they feel cruelty, they feel hate. Well, he also lies to them. Don't forget about that. Oh yeah, absolutely. He lies and they know he's lying and they still believe it. But I feel like that the Democrats always have to take the higher ground. They talk about the nuance.

Is there any talk going into these upcoming elections that we have got to come out with fire and ice? We've got to hit back instead of always being on the defensive, taking the offensive. A hundred percent. You're a hundred percent correct. In fact, if you looked at oversight last year run by Jamie Raskin that I was on, that's what we did for two years. We never were on the defenses.

We were always on the offensive. It caught Republicans off guard and we found out that they're actually snowflakes. They have thin skin. They can't take it. When you turn their page, when you take their tactics and do it on them they're like oh my god they're like what are you doing right this is improper right and all of a sudden they're it's ridiculous so yes i have never subscribed to the when they go low we go high i used to say that when they go low we should go medium and now i think really when they go low, we should go medium. And now I think really when they go low, we should dig six feet and hit water. Totally. That's the name of the game. Now we shouldn't, we should

make sure we stay in truth. Okay. Which that should separate us and them. Okay. But that doesn't mean we have to play nice. It does talking in nuance doesn't work. It does not work. So I'm talking about the economy, and I'm talking about Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicaid. Those are my messages. Yes, there are 15 other things that are going on. Immigration, what they're doing with due process, all of these things are really important, but I can't hit people with 20 different things. I can't overwhelm them. I got to stay focused on the things that are going to get us re-elected and get us into the majority the economy social security medicare medicare and be super clear right the economy is worse they're cutting medicaid and social security

medicare that's it simple right we can't get into the nuance of well you know they're really cutting this they're not cutting beneficiaries they're're cutting the services. No, none of that nonsense. They're cutting the programs. Okay. I want to leave you with this thought because we have to, all of us that oppose MAGA, we're going to have to build a coalition. You know how they built a coalition between racists, homophobes, anti-Semites, you know, white supremacists. They built that coalition. They're super proud of that. So in Europe, they have multiple political parties.

We just have this two-party system. And not to get too nuancy, but for all of us, you know, us on the left, media, you fighting, you know, ground zero there with MTG and all the other fuckers there. We need to figure out how to link the left and the center. And they do this in Europe by saying we have to form an alliance against fascism. And I think that the economic message is a big one. But where we live in deeply red states, the economic message truly, truly resonates. But also this idea of freedom, which Kamala was kind of touching on, that's something that I hope that Democrats claim and rescue this idea of freedom. Because in our state, you know, you've seen Ryan Walters, the superintendent, I mean, whack job. I think can out crazy Marjorie Taylor Greene. But, you know, we're putting the

Ten Commandments up. We have that case now where taxpayer money is going to fund a religious school and they're taking away freedoms from people. And I hope that the Democrats can message that too. And I say that so that we form an alliance between center and the leftists because we have i agree with you we have to form an alliance and people have to make concessions that are on the opposite side of maga yeah and i would tell you that the caucus up here the house caucus is more united on that than i think we were the last two years quite frankly and that's because we have a sole goal, right? So yeah, you take the AOC wing in the party, you take the moderates, they have different

messages to their groups, but where they meet and are working together is we have to get back into power. And so we are working better together now, quite frankly, than I've seen us in our caucus meetings, in our messaging. We're all attending different messaging groups. And so, yeah, we need everyone to go do that because we got to get turnout back up. I agree. And I think we all have to coordinate. You guys need to let us know. The most conservative Democrat do a press conference with AOC so that then platforms like ours can message that because we're really in such a historical moment. We're living in a historical moment and the collaboration and the messaging that's going to require of us up against this right-wing media echo chamber

and the nonstop propaganda from it, it's going to take so much collaboration to save this country and save the civil rights of so many people and save the economy and so i hope that we can keep partnering because i i agree with you it makes me happy that y'all are more united than ever and and we need to people in independent media need to unite the base, you know, from the leftist with center and start using unification messaging. Because I just, everybody that watches this, we all doom scroll, we're all scared, but we have no choice but to fight right now. And so I can't thank you enough for coming on. I like you a lot. I see your clips and I hope that we can all- Yeah, I give them plenty of shit. Don't worry.

I love it. No, we see it. We watch it. I see it. I love it. I love that you put them on defense all the time. And I see Raskin doing that too. And it's just seeing that,

seeing somebody give a damn and fight, it just goes such a long way. Even if it's a 20 second clip, you're just like, fuck yes, there he is. Jared's fighting the good fight. It just makes you know that somebody cares. Yeah, well, we got a lot of people up here doing that. And I appreciate what you guys are doing, right? Because this, you're right. We got to, the right wing machine has always been a thing, right? Television, then it was radio and now it's podcasts, right? And so Democrats got to get in

the fight. We got to get in the game. And so you guys are in that too with us i agree i totally agree this has been a very productive conversation i think it's healthy for the democrats to have conversations like this so that by the time we get to 2026 we have formed very strong alliances and we give you guys the majority so that you can just i'm just going to say it impeaching i want to change so badly all right jared uh congressman moskowitz thank you so much for coming on iHypnose. You're welcome anytime. And tell Eric Swalwell, he's our BFF, that we said hello. I will.

Okay. All right. Bye. Bye-bye. Thanks.