Modern Wisdom - #734 - Dean Phillips - Just How Broken Is American Politics?

Episode Date: January 20, 2024

Dean Phillips is a member of the U.S House of Representatives, presidential candidate and former owner of Talenti Gelato and Belvedere Vodka. Whether it's stories in the press or scenes in House Of Cards, no one seems to have much faith in the American political system at the moment. Dean has had a front row seat to this world for a long time and is now running for president, so he should be able to give some insight on just how bad it's become. Expect to learn whether congress or the business world has more backstabbing in it, the perverse incentives of donors and funding, Dean’s background building Belvedere Vodka, whether politicians are smarter than the average person, what Dean’s prediction for 2024 are and much more... Sponsors: Get an exclusive discount from Surfshark VPN at https://surfshark.deals/MODERNWISDOM (use code MODERNWISDOM) Get 5 Free Travel Packs, Free Liquid Vitamin D and more from AG1 at https://drinkag1.com/modernwisdom (discount automatically applied) Get a Free Sample Pack of all LMNT Flavours with your first box at https://www.drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom (automatically applied at checkout) Extra Stuff: Get my free reading list of 100 books to read before you die: https://chriswillx.com/books Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic: https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom Episodes You Might Enjoy: #577 - David Goggins - This Is How To Master Your Life: http://tinyurl.com/43hv6y59 #712 - Dr Jordan Peterson - How To Destroy Your Negative Beliefs: http://tinyurl.com/2rtz7avf #700 - Dr Andrew Huberman - The Secret Tools To Hack Your Brain: http://tinyurl.com/3ccn5vkp - Get In Touch: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact - Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello friends, welcome back to the show. My guest today is Dean Phillips. He's a member of the US House of Representatives, a presidential candidate, and the former owner of Talenti Gelato and Belvedere Vodka. Whether it's stories in the press or scenes in House of Cards, no one seems to have much faith in the American political system at the moment. Dean has had a front row seat to this world for a long time and is now running for president, so he should be able to give some insight on just how bad it's become. Expect to learn whether Congress or the business world has more backstabbing in it, the perverse incentives of donors and funding, Dean's background building Belvedere Vodka, whether

politicians are smarter than the average person, what Dean's predictions for 2024 are, and much more. Honestly, it's quite rare to kind of get this level of insight and transparency around what's going on inside of the US Congress and the House of Representatives. And regardless of whether or not you want Dean Phillips to get the Democratic nomination for the 2024 election, or you hate America overall or whatever,

it's very interesting to see just how the incentives are aligned and just what the internal culture of American politics are. For better or for worse, what happens in America ends up cascading down to the rest of the world. So it is pretty interesting to work out what's going on. This episode is brought to you by Surfshark VPN. Protect your browsing online and get access to the entire world's Netflix library for

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with your first box. That's drinklmnt.com slash modern wisdom. But now, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Dean Phillips. Did you found Belvedere Vodka? I did not found Belvedere Vodka, but I helped find Belvedere Vodka. In fact, we had a wonderful experience back in 1993, Chris. I was 24 years old. I had recently joined our family business after working for a startup company in the bicycle business for a couple of years.

We are my grandmother, who was the advice columnist, Dear Abby, introduced my father, Eddie Phillips and me to a man named Tad Dorda, who was a poll, a Polish gentleman who had a proposition relative to the vodka business. So we thought we could sell our Phillips peppermint schnapps, which we made in Minnesota, to the Polish market. And we went on a trip to Poland in 1993.

My father, Steve Gill, our business partner, Tad Dorda, we thought we could sell some schnapps. What it turned into is the discovery, essentially, of what we thought was the most beautiful packaging we'd ever seen in the world, and the most disruptive idea that the biggest category in spirits had ever seen. And that was what turned into both Belvedere and Chopin Botkow. And it was that trip that changed our strategy. We negotiated with the Polish government to obtain the distribution rights. Some years later, purchased the intellectual property and the distilleries and created the world's first luxury vodka brand.

And by the way, took on two big brands, Absolute and Stola Cznaja. That is a little bit of a metaphor for what I'm doing right now. What was disruptive about it? What was disruptive, Chris, first and foremost in a lot of industries, especially developed industries, you'll have a couple of really big brands that essentially command most of the market and they spend all their time kind of fighting each other to the bottom on price Attacking each other by the way the analogy of courses Democrats and Republicans here in the United States. And what was disruptive is that we went into a category in which the most expensive vodka at that time was about $15 a bottle. And we came in at $25 a bottle.

We came in with a cork finish. We came in with a very different proposition predicated on authenticity. But here is the special sauce. We recognized that this isn't the analog era, by the way, Chris, well before social media and the internet and the like. But people were aspirational. People want to always live better, do better, be more happy, have more stuff. What we recognized is people couldn't buy the same house as the biggest celebrities of the day or have the same car or watch or dresses.

But they could buy the same bottle of vodka for $25 that the most famous person in the world was drinking with his or her friends. And there was the disruptive nature of this whole thing. The luxury vodka category was created. It endured for over a decade, now been replaced by Tequila, of course, but it was the brand, Belvedere, that really redefined luxury vodka marketing and recognized that it's a fashion industry, just like so many others. What is the competitive relationship or what was it between Belvedere and Grey Goose? Because if I was to show my mom two bottles of vodka, she might even think that it was two different versions, perhaps from the same company.

This is one type. This is another. My background is in nightlife. So I ran nightclubs for a decade and a half, a million entries across my career. So I'm intimately familiar with vodka, with spirits, with working in bars and clubs. But talk to me about that competitive landscape. You guys come first, you've got this sort of frosted finish on the bottle. It's very distinctive. What, where does Greg use to Greg, you see that and then try and copy what's the story? So Chris, you're, you're, here's another untold story. What most people don't know is that when we launched Belvedere Vaca, we also launched another brand, a brand called Roel, R-O-H-O Rohull, which means motor oil in German. It came in a little black drum, like it looked like an oil barrel. And we introduced that to take on Jägermeister.

We thought Jägermeister could use a disruptive brand. And at the same time, we introduced Rohull. In the very beginning, Chris, we got a lot more interest and excitement and orders for Rohull than we did for Belvedere, and we were really excited about it. Well, Sidney Frank, who is the now deceased owner of the Jagermeister, I don't think he was very pleased seeing his baby being taken on, so he thought he would go after us as the story goes and came out with a vodka that looked exactly the same as Belvedere. So we sued and we won, but here's the lesson learned.

We were able to have our graphic design team redesign the Grey Goose bottle. And let me tell you, the lesson is, never ask a graphic design agency to redesign something to make it look worse, because it doesn't happen. They made it look better. And we essentially settled. They redesigned Grey Goose. It looked better than ever. But I'll tell you, I give Sydney Frank credit because what he recognized, Chris, is we thought the Belvedere vodka category, we thought luxury vodka might be a nice market, not a huge one. So we marketed it with a very, very small aperture. And Sydney Frank, he came out with a huge one. So we marketed it with a very, very small aperture. And Sidney Frank, he came out with a huge aperture, advertising USA Today, big displays on the floor of big retailers. And he did a better job of recognizing the size of the market.

And we didn't. So Grey Goose outperformed Belvedere eventually. We sold the brand to LVMH, did very well, of course, but Senu Frank did even better when he sold his brand to Bacardi. And like anything else in life, you know, you win some, you lose some, you learn lessons and next time you do better. This feels like a Ferrari Lamborghini battle between, between two sort of premium brands. Yeah, you could say, you could say so. You could say so. You could say so. could say so you could say so and a great story and the other untold story about Belvedere is the fact that Jay Z had a lot to do with its early success it didn't do that well in the beginning.

I was getting ready one morning in probably 1996 1997 and I have MTV on and lo and behold Chris I see a music video Jay Z video Vian and Lo and Behold Chris, I see a music video, Jay-Z video, where he's pouring Belvedere all over the place. He opens a refrigerator. It's filled with Belvedere vodka. I call my dad. It's the analog era. I'm like, dad, turn on MTV. He didn't know what channel it was, so we waited till we got to the office that day.

The whole company sat around the TV waiting for MTV to replay the video. When we saw it, we knew the brand was changed forever and lo and behold, Chris, we got orders that maybe tripled within a couple of weeks from all around the country. And Jay-Z and my dad ended up having dinner, probably a year later. Jay-Z introduced his own vodka called Armadale, which I don't think anybody remembers,

because he saw the opportunity to do for his own brand what he did for ours. And that's the story of Belvedere, people don't really know it. Talk to me about the principles that you carried over from that into the ice cream company. Yeah. So the same notion of disruption. What we like is to look at a category that has two big brands that are not particularly special that dominate the category and have for a long time.

And when we looked at ice cream, you had Ben and Jerry's and Hagen Daz owned by big multinational food companies, essentially doing the same thing that Stole in absolute war, not a lot of innovation, a lot of confrontation, a lot of focus on price versus value or quality or innovation. And we recognize there's a grand opportunity. The founder of Tlenti was a young guy named Josh Hochschuler who became our partner. And the beautiful part of that story is because he had so little, he had a gelato shop that was not doing well in Dallas, Texas, got an order to package the gelato in containers for the local grocery store, but he could not afford to actually print like a nice ice cream pint that you see all over the world. So he had to go to basically a surplus store, and he found on closeout a bunch of clear plastic jars

that he could just put a label on. It was the only way he could do it. And that is the beauty of Valenti Gelato. It was transparent. It was in a redefining package just like Belvedere. And we did the same thing. We priced it just a little bit higher, more luxurious, and we elevated a category that was still an affordable luxury. So you could drink the

finest vodka in the world for $25 and you could enjoy the finest gelato made on earth for only $5 a pint. And it's the same notion, affordable luxury branded very, very well and we sold it to Unilever seven years later. What did you learn from the LVMH and Unilever negotiations? I've had a number of friends that have exited companies to one of them to Unilever and a bunch of others to equally large, negotiatingly competent companies. What were the lessons that you took that you took away from that? I will tell you without diving too deeply into the details, let me just tell you that I think Unilever is a more principled corporation that I think stands more by their word and a company of great character that does a lot of good for the world.

I think I could not say quite as kind of things about LVMH and that transaction, and I will just leave it at that. Okay, I understand. And I think that's what I mean. There's a really interesting principle from Chris Voss's Never Split the Difference. Well, he talks about in a negotiation, you can get yourself to the stage where you get absolutely everything that you want. But if it's so aggressive that the other party feels like they've been bent over coals, there is a, it's almost, it's not quite a Pyrrhic victory, but there is a loss in the victory

to some degree. Because, you know, unless you don't care about the way that you leave the world after you leave it, you have sort of fundamentally... It's become a zero-sum game or even less than a zero-sum game. So, I'm glad you say that. In fact, I had a great grandfather, Chris J. Phillips, who emigrated from what was then the Russian Empire, Minskce came to the u.s. is just a little boy. At age eight years old started selling newspapers on the street corner outside of milwaukee wisconsin eventually moved to minnesota. And entered the spirits business right after prohibition and became one of the biggest distributors of spirits in the country and of course the company that ultimately. Introduce Belvedere vodka he told me three things when I was a young man. He said, Dean, money is like manure.

If you stack it up, it stinks, and if you spread it out, it fertilizes. He said, business is a means to an end. In the end, it's not aggregating as much wealth as humanly possible. The joy of business is to share it with as many people as possible in the communities that make the business successful. He also said, Dean, you always have to leave a little something on the table for the next guy, which was his way of saying in a negotiation, you know what? It's actually the mensch.

It's actually the strong person that leaves a little bit more, even when you're in a position of strength, which by the way, I've seen the same dynamic play out in Congress a number of times, but those are his lessons. The've seen the same dynamic play out in Congress a number of times. But those are his lessons. And the same is true, I think, in business negotiations. It's not just about the capital. It's not just about the money. It's about how people are treated afterwards, your employees, how the communities in which

you've done business are treated. I wish more entrepreneurs would be mindful of how their exits sometimes impact families and communities in ways that they didn't anticipate. And I wish more deals were structured to guarantee a little bit more left over for a lot of people who work really hard to create success and are not really thought about at the end. And we've done, I think, a very nice job in our businesses to make sure that those who make it possible share. And that's kind of part of my notion in Congress and about government now, too.

How do we ensure that everybody has a foundation. From which they can pursue their dreams and right now I don't think the United States in particular is doing a good job and I think too many companies reward the very top of their management team and do not. Express the same consideration and empathy towards those in the bottom end of their socioeconomic economic scale. and empathy towards those on the bottom end of their socioeconomic scale. Okay. So you pivoted from the muck and myer of business into the muckier, more myer-ridden world of politics. Which one's more cutthroat? Oh, there's no, Congress is more cutthroat because it's because the rules and engagement are amorphous. Friendships are not legitimate, they're transactional. And it is a strangely, talk about zero-sum game, the spirit of collaboration, of a culture of debate, deliberation,

of learning, of discovery, the basics of doing better in one's life, whether it's business or any kind of pursuit, are almost totally absent. It is almost and exclusively Chris a culture of self-preservation. People who wish to simply be a part of the club and to stay a part of the club and do what it takes to remain a member of the club. And as the only one, there are 535 members of the United States Senate and House. I'm the only one that doesn't take any PAC money with this political action committee money, which is money from special interest groups,

corporate or union. I don't take any money from them. I don't take any lobbyist money. I don't give money to fellow members of the US Congress or accept theirs. And I don't have what is called a leadership PAC, which is basically a slush fund that American politicians can use at their own disposal, which makes me

the only one out of 535 people that doesn't play that game. I was the vice chair of the Problem Solvers Caucus, intending to get together with my Republican friends and talk, build trust, get to know each other, because leaders on both sides of the aisle don't do that. I serve on the Modernization Committee in the last Congress trying to fix the social, organizational, and physical design flaws of Congress. And then last Congress, I was elected to a leadership position by my peers, hoping that I could really affect change.

But as long as the culture attracts people who are almost exclusively government service folks that don't have a lot of private sector experience. And as long as the culture rewards silence and staying in line and obediencey, it's gonna be the same disaster for the United States and frankly, I think for the world, as long as we populate it with people that are beholden to that system, that's one reason I'm running for president

to expose the truth, provide a little bit of common sense and competency to a place and at a time we really need it. It's becoming more and more like House of Cards every sentence that you say. It's weird, right? Because, you know, as a muggle outside of the system, we see the rumors and the accusations and the gossip and stuff that creeps out. And then we see the dramatization with, you know, shows like House of Cards, West Wing or whatever. And Veep, which Amandui Nucci,

who originally did The Thick of It, which is where that came from, the British equivalent, which is phenomenal. It's my favorite comedy of all time. Both of those actually play off the back of, there's some gamesmanship and there's some corruption, but the main joke behind both Veep and the thick of it is ineptitude. It's that the people who are in charge, it's idiots all the way up. The people who are in charge are not only no smarter than you, average person watching

this, but perhaps actually a little bit more stupid and an awful lot more sheltered. What is the average leader as smart as the average watcher in your opinion? Chris, you're going to give me a trouble. Let me tell you the oldest joke in Congress, and I felt it. The first day I'm elected, I'm sitting on the house floor, I'm looking up at this massive eagle in the ceiling of the United States House of Representatives in the, literally the temple of democracy as recognized by the whole world. And it's the evening and it's dark. I'm with all my new colleagues. And I look around and I think to myself, Chris, how did I get here?

How in the world did I get here? And then about a week later, I'm sitting in the same room, all places filled with Democrats and Republicans from all over the country, and I'm looking around and I think, how did they get here? So to your point, that's an old joke in Washington. And look, there are some wonderful, smart, remarkable people in Washington, both Democrats and Republicans. Are they the majority? No, absolutely not. And I think part of the problem is we are now in an era, not just in the United States, but where public service and politics are attracting the people who are there for reasons

that are much more personal than they are out of principle. And because of the culture of condemnation and anger, tainment and constant fundraising, it doesn't attract the kind of people of competency, of life experience, of professional experience that should be populating, at least to some degree, our institutions of government. So the answer is, I think that's a big part of the problem. And one of my mandates and personal missions is to reintroduce the notion of public service to a younger generation

that have great ideas that right now don't even consider it. And I think that's a big part of the problem. If we only hand the keys to people who have their own personal agenda or their interest is in tenure and preservation of power, we're going to be poorly served as we have been in recent years and that's something we've got to change fast. I read something that said it's recommended when people join Congress that they spend 25 hours a week on fundraising calls. And if you are what you do, we're primarily sending fundraisers to DC. And if you include flights and travel, it's perfectly likely that you'll basically have no time to actually get anything done. So how much do you do that's work and how

much do you do that's fluff? How much gamesmanship is occurring and how much actual graft gets done? Well, Chris, I'm getting in good trouble by saying the quiet part out loud. And here's the quiet part. Members of Congress are spending 10,000 hours per week raising money. You just, you just said the number. 25 hours times over 500 people do the math, 10,000 hours per week collectively. In fact, I wrote a bill that is pending that would preclude fundraising in Washington from breakfast to dinner time, because all my colleagues are constantly raising money.

I told you earlier, I'm one of 535 that does it differently, which means it's hard for me to find a friend to have dinner with on a Wednesday night because they're all at fundraisers. And even during the day at committee hearings and educational opportunities and constituent visits, people are not around because they're across the street either dialing for dollars or raising money from PACs or lobbyists or at a law firm or something. It's sickening, but it's legalized corruption. Here's the biggest issue about grits. If I could just say the biggest issue is this.

Yes, the money corrupts because if you are getting paid by somebody, even if it's going into your campaign, if you're getting money from somebody, they're generally doing it because they want something in return. They want influence. They want access. They want you to vote a certain way. Of course, we're not stupid. The biggest issue is this though, when you only congregate with the wealthy and well-connected,

even if you don't mean to, but the system requires that you do, all you're hearing about is their problems, which tend to be issues that are the last things on the mind of struggling people all around the world. So we have a system right now that forces everyone to spend their time with the wealthy and well connected Democrats and Republicans. And that's why we have Trumpism in America, because 150 million Americans are saying, you know what, my member of Congress never listens to me. They never show up in my neighborhood. They've never called me to ask me for anything. I don't even know how to reach them. I'm unheard, my issues don't matter. I can barely afford my life.

All you all are sitting in Washington having steak dinners getting your money and acting like morons. That's what people think. That's why I'm trying to do this differently, Chris. It's the fact that our system is forcing people to behave in a way that is destructive to democracy. And all we have to do is change the reward system and re-empower voters and disempower the wealthy and well-connected in Washington. It's not rocket science. And I know how to do it.

It's why the rich men north of Richmond song I think caught fire. Exactly, exactly. He was speaking for tens of millions of frustrated people and I'm hearing it every day. I get it. You know, I don't know if you know my story, you know, but Chris, I was I lost my dad in Vietnam when I was just six months old. He had no money, uh, which is why he earned an ROTC scholarship to get his education and then went to Vietnam and lost his life. I was six months old. My mom was 24 and widow.

We lived with my great grandparents in St. Paul, Minnesota, until I was three years old. Uh, and then I was adopted. I got really lucky. I got adopted into an amazing family with all kinds of blessings and privileges and love. You know, very few kids who lost their dads in Vietnam got lucky like I did. Very few kids who lost their moms or dad in Afghanistan

or Iraq got lucky like I did. And I'm realizing right now that we have to recognize our good fortune. Every one of us who has succeeded had somebody that believed in us, somebody that gave us a hand, somebody that recognized something in us. This notion that only doing it alone is the American dream is nonsensical. And I think what we're seeing right now is a real erosion of a belief that things are possible in America and around the world if

people work hard because the system is stacked to support the wealthy and the well connected. And I know it having lived on both sides of it. It's like, I've got it in my head that it's kind of like a status driven Ponzi scheme. So it constantly needs more favors to be bestowed from the bottom to pay the favors at the top. And no one really, except for the fact that in a Ponzi scheme, the people at the bottom, all of the people except for the people at the top, are unaware of the fact that it's going on. Whereas this, it's a cartel. It's a cartel of people permanently cycling through a variety of things. And everyone is, it seems, what you're saying is true. Everybody is on board with just don't stop

the music from playing. We just need to keep the status quo going. That's and that's what happens in a duopoly. In a duopoly, both participants wish to protect the status quo because they know how to manage it. They're accustomed to it. They know the game and they don't want competition. And whether it's Coke and Pepsi with Red Bull, whether it was Ben and Jerry's with Tlendi, whether it was Absolute and Stola Chenaya with Belvedere, when you disrupt a category, they come at you hard, man. They're coming at me hard.

They don't want the quiet part set out loud. They don't want the truth to be told. They don't want the fact that this is corrupt to be exposed, even if it's legal, because they're trying to protect it. And I have faith. I have faith that if you tell the truth and let people know what's really going on, that they'll take notice. And what you just said is absolutely true. I don't want to impugn all the people because the fact is this system requires this behavior for you to stay alive. You know, I made the decision to torpedo my career in the United States Congress after three terms. I knew by making this decision that I could probably never come back.

And that's unique because there are very few who are willing to give up their careers to do the right thing. And that's what makes me a little... What did I do? Well, I resigned my house leadership position and I decided I'm going to run for president of the United States against a sitting incumbent president, which is rarely done. But this is not a normal time. This is not a normal election.

The opponent is not a normal human being. And our current likely nominee is an unelectable human being. But I tell you, the party does not like that I'm getting out of line, that I'm not waiting my turn, that I am not abiding by those unspoken rules of what you do or don't do with an incumbent president. And I recognize if I did this, I would be spending every ounce of political capital that I had earned, and I worked hard to earn it over my three terms. But I recognize that if I didn't do this now, I wouldn't be meeting the moment. And it's not about 2028 or 2032 or about a lifetime aspiration to become president.

It's about doing this right now because it is existential. And Donald Trump, in my estimation, is an existential threat to the United States of America and to the rest of the world, period. Did people not say that before his last term? Sure they did. In fact, a lot of my colleagues, my Republican colleagues, said the same thing quietly and then they'd get in front of the cameras at night, Chris, and say something totally different. And lo and behold, little did I know that that disease was contagious because suddenly on my side of the aisle, Democrats were having the same conversations about Joe Biden. He's not electable.

Bidenomics is ridiculous. His approval numbers are horrifyingly low. He's not going to win in the battleground states. Vice President Harris is even in worse shape as it relates to her approval numbers. But then they get in front of the cameras and it's a totally different story. And we wonder why Americans have lost faith in their government because they know. And when 260 or so Democrats serve in the US House and Senate, and we see data that says over 50% of Democrats want a different nominee, 83% of Democrats under 30 want a different nominee, but only one person in the whole Congress out of 260 is willing to say it out loud publicly.

That's me. You can imagine there's something wrong. There's something really, really wrong. What do you think happens in 12 months time if there's no change from here? Who do you think becomes president if nothing else changes? Well, I think I will ultimately become the Democratic nominee. It's going to take time. Many people right now don't see that path. I certainly do. I think come May of June of next year, we'll see head-to-head polls that will show me ahead of Donald Trump. I'm a former businessman, then the board chair of a health system, a regent at a university, then the chair of the board of a charitable philanthropy, served three terms in the House,

a former Democratic leader, I'm the ranking member of the Middle East subcommittee on foreign affairs, and the vice ranking member of the Small Business Committee. I've got a lot of experience. I think I will be able to put together the coalition you need to win in America by inviting Donald Trump supporters who deserve and are worthy of invitation, not condemnation. I'll be ahead of Donald Trump. Joe Biden is almost certainly, certainly going to be behind him even further. And then Democrats will have a choice at the convention. Do we elevate a candidate who is likely to win or do we literally choose the candidate that the data is saying is likely to lose? That's a pretty

clear choice. And I think it's one that Democrats will do well in, because I think they'll choose me. And by the way, Chris, if some other candidate appears, enters the primary and has approvals or polls that are even better as it relates to Donald Trump, then I should get behind that person. That's the whole point of democracy, is let people decide who is best positioned to win.

But in the United States, we are not a culture that is supposed to endorse and tolerate coronations, but that's exactly, exactly what this country is doing right now, despite the fact that it literally secured its independence from that very system of coronation. Yeah, it's this sort of every four-year cycle of hereditary-ness where who it is in gets passed on again and that goes down.

What, so in your estimation, if it's a Biden-Trump head-to-head come 2024, what's the outcome? Oh, almost, if I had to put all my money, if you had this, if you said, Dean, you had to take every dollar in assets you have and put it on just one or the other based on what I think is going to happen. Sadly, I'd have to put it all on Trump. Every single bit of data, every single bit, Chris, his approval numbers, the intuition when you speak with voters in our country, the intuition that Joe Biden is not only is he not better off than he was four years ago, he is so much worse off. The polling data in the battleground states, in the national numbers, all of it points

to the same thing. And by the way, the worst of it is today. There was a poll that was just released today that shows that voters in the United States between 18 and 29 years old favor Donald Trump by six points. That is a cataclysmic change for Democrats. That is why my proposition is we got to wake up before we sleepwalk into a unmitigated disaster. That's the way things are going, but that's why I'm running is because we need an alternative need a change to a new generation I'd be the first gen X president in American history.

Joe Biden was born before the advent of television. Before the advent of television how in the heck can he or Donald Trump address the issues of AI for goodness sakes everybody you know. address the issues of AI for goodness sakes, everybody, you know? What have you learned observing RFK Jr.'s trajectory over the last few months? I have to say, generally speaking, I admire how he's conducted himself. He's appealing to people using nontraditional platforms, which by the way, you can imagine the minute I declared my candidacy and was no longer part of the establishment, I get stonewalled from a lot of the core, you know, the major media platforms, MSNBC and some of the others. I think RFK Jr. suffered the

same thing. He saw the writing on the wall. So he started going to where people are, which is exactly what I'm doing. I'm doing that with you right now, for example. I think his videos, the way he expresses himself, the way he expresses himself, the way he presents information, I'd say 80% of what he says sounds pretty unreasonable to me. Now, there are a couple things, 20% of what he says is pretty damn unreasonable to me, I have to say. We see science a little bit differently.

We see health and medicine a little bit differently, and we certainly see vaccinations a little bit differently. But I do believe he should be heard. I believe there's a place and space for people like RFK and Marianne Williamson and others to be heard. I just wish they were running in the Democratic primary so that we could all make our cases within this construct, if you will, that allows Democrats to choose the person best positioned to win. Because when you run as a third party candidate, Chris, in the US, it has the tendency to draw votes from the person you actually are trying to, you would rather see win.

And since we don't have ranked choice voting yet in the United States, that can be very dangerous. But I think, I think RFK is appealing to a lot of people for good reason. People are sick and tired of the nonsense. Uh, they're sick and tired of the corruption. They want someone to tell the truth. And of course, he's got an extraordinary political name. But I also have to point out the other obvious here too, Chris. Joe Biden has been doing this for 50 years. Before that, you had the Clintons, Hillary and Bill Clinton. Then you had the

Bushes. Now you've got the Trump family, right? And the Kennedy family is back. I think it's time for a little bit something new, not a political dynasty per se, not a coronation, but it's time for America, I think, to move to a new chapter. And that's why I wish there were more candidates who are coming from the outside, that are not part of that political industrial complex, which I think is why Donald Trump did so well. He appealed to people who saw him as a little bit of a messiah, if you will, as an outsider. And I have that ability to kind of build the bridge of both. I came from the outside. I'm a business person.

And I'm taking on an establishment and a structure that they're defending almost at all costs from us telling the truth. In that respect, Kennedy and I and some others, I think, are going to expose what people should really know more about, and it's not pretty. Just how bifurcated is the current system inside of Congress? How hard is it to talk across the aisle? Well, I'm unique. Uh, out of 535 members of Congress and 50 US governors, I'm ranked number two, most bipartisan.

I'm a progressive, my heart's a progressive. Who's number one? Susie Lee, my friend, Democratic friend from Nevada. I gave her a hard time on the House floor the other day. I said, Susie, you totally ruined my whole deal. I was number one last Congress, now I'm number two. But like Avis Carrentals, I'm number two, but I try hard. So that's how I do it the old-fashioned way, Chris, man. I break bread with people. I grab a beer, I get to know them. My dearest friends in Congress are both Democrats and Republicans. My wife, Annalisa and I, we've befriended wonderful couples by hosting them at our

house for dinner, getting to know each other, spending time with each other's families. Because you can't work with people you don't trust and you can't trust people you don't know. And what you've got in the case of Nancy Pelosi and Kevin McCarthy, instead of them pushing members of Congress together when I joined the Congress in 2019, they did just the opposite. You know, they put us on separate buses, going to separate events. They didn't get us to tell each other our life stories.

They didn't give us much education. They wanted us consumed with fundraising because they didn't want the power structure challenged. So I had to do it differently and that's what I've been doing. And as president, I should tell you the most important. When I'm president, I'm going to do it fundamentally differently. I'm going to have a team of rivals in the White House. I want Democrats and Republicans on my cabinet. I want extraordinary, the very best and brightest Americans running the agencies who are competent managers, who've run multi-billion-dollar enterprises before, who focus on customer service, who can deliver

better value at lower costs. I'm going to have a youth cabinet of a high school or college student from every state in the country, 50 total, sharing ideas on policy with me in the White House. I'm going to have common ground dinners in the White House where we have Democratic and Republican Americans from all around the country, having dinner with their president in a casual setting, getting to talk to him in this case, sharing what's important. Not just black tie affairs with celebrities and heads of state. It is the old school notion of people with people in an era where everything we're doing, Chris, is behind screens. A lot of it is valuable, but it's also destroying the very fabric of what the world is going

to need much more of as we move forward, which is relationships between the US and China, between fellow Americans, between Brits and Americans. If we don't build relationships by breaking bread and looking each other in the eyes, it doesn't matter what the future holds in terms of technology or wealth. It's going to destroy human kind, and that's just the truth. It seems from the outside, looking in to the political sphere and also to the cultural sphere of looking at the left, there is a huge amount of puritanism, a massive purity spiral where any dissenting voice is treated with a unique kind of

skepticism. Distain. Absolutely. How... Just looking at that from the outside, what do you wish that the left stopped doing so much? Why is that purity spiral so rampant and how can you maintain any in-group favoritism without being totally at the mercy of ideology? Well, to answer your question very directly, I think those on the furthest left who believe

that they believe in inclusion are actually practicing the very worst form of exclusion. And that's as it relates to debate and conversation. You know, the only in business, the same grandfather I told you about my great grandfather used to say, if two people in a business, I always agree, you only need one of them. And his message was surround yourself with people who have different opinions, who have different life experiences and have different ideas. When you solicit them, don't just solicit them from the management class. Go into the production department. Talk to the sales reps.

This notion of discovery, the beautiful part of being a human being is learning. What a blessing to be you where you get to listen to fascinating people provoke you all the time. What a cool thing. So why would we as human beings wish to deny ourselves of the very opportunity to learn from another human being? Doesn't mean we're going to like what they have to say. But you do. I don't disagree, but it has become almost the signature of the left now to not listen to dissenting opinions, to take a minority opinion and allow that to tyrannize everybody, including the people that aren't even a part of that party.

Is that something that can even be fixed? Are you thinking about that? Yes. That's why I'm running. Look at that. Chris, I don't want to say a last-ditch effort because I hope this is the beginning of some fundamental change on a lot of issues as it relates to my party and my family, if you will.

And that's one of my missions, is to restore those conversations, restore the public square, restore debate, not stifle it, not shame someone. For, look, if someone expresses a hateful point of view that puts another human being at risk, I think that is a dry, I do draw the line there. And I do think there are some bigots and some misogynists and some racists and anti-Semites and Islamophobes out there that are terribly hurtful to other human beings. And I do. I take exception to it and I have animus towards them. But as it relates to political perspective, as it relates to policy propositions, as it

relates to differences of opinion, we should be fought, Democrats should be fostering those spaces and places, not shutting it down. And yes, it is salvageable, but it takes leadership. President Biden is not creating that space in place. I want Americans to see, I want it modeled by their president about how you actually engage different opinions. That's why I'm going to have a cabinet that is going to be very different. I like to have some of these meetings televised so that people can see how different opinions can be shared without condemnation and separation and segregation to just the opposite. And that's why I'm grateful for platforms that are willing to invite different people with different ideas

to share them. If you don't like it, don't listen. You don't like it, don't listen. Or if you don't like it, take your turn and explain your perspective. But don't shame and shout people down into, um, into, um, and dehumanize them in that way, unless it's painful speech that is hurting other human beings. And frankly, I think most of what the left is doing right now, the far left at least is just shutting down all debate. How do you know when the left's gone too far? Look at, I believe, first of all, I'm a common sense human being, you know, more than anything

else. Before I'm an American, before I'm a Jewish American, before I'm a Democrat, before I'm a father, a son, a husband, you know, I'm a common sense human being that has an open mind and an open heart. I have a high threshold for anger when I get there, I get there, and I'm resolute and I'm principled. But I have a pretty good instinct when something doesn't seem right, when someone seems to be lying, when something doesn't seem to be reasonable. I love new ideas.

I love it when people try to convince me to this very day that the earth is flat or that we have UFOs. I love those conversations, Chris. We should have more of those. No, but when someone says something that is just baselessly horrifyingly dangerous, that's a little bit different. And I can't tell you I've got a meter or some type of a red light green light system, but I tell you, I'm feeling more and more

that there are things that I wanna say that I sometimes can't, that I know a lot of people wanna say that they sometimes can't. And that's why one of my slogans is, I'm gonna say the quiet part out loud, no matter what it does, no matter the implications, no matter the consequences, because

I've actually suffered probably the worst consequence. Essentially ended my career in Congress and have drawn the ire of probably hundreds of people in Washington that used to be my very, very good friends. And I'm doing so because I think a truth has to be told that sometimes will be very much aligned with those on the left and sometimes will be very disappointing when they hear the truth. And I would ask my friends on the right to be open to the same thing. There are going to be some things I say that you are going to totally agree with and you're going to hear some things that I frankly think you need to hear that you may not at all.

And so be it. I'll hug it out afterwards as long as you're not threatening another human being. It seems pretty easily defined when the right goes too far, but we've seen over the last few years, a total inability or ineptitude or just unpreparedness from people from the left to call out the extreme parts of that. Mostly fiery but peaceful protest comes to mind.

Why do you think it's so hard to call out groups like Antifa and other, what are supposedly left aligned groups causing havoc? Chris, I'm struggling with that right now. As a Jewish American, you can imagine people who I consider to be protectors, defenders, progressives who were always the protector of the underdog, I've kind of seen that affection stop at our front door. And that's hard, you can imagine. That's really hard right now. And I'm trying to reconcile that. There are a lot of communities that have been disenfranchised,

that have been oppressed, that have been mistreated in this country and all around the world. And rather than condemning one another or separating from one another, my proposition is we should be uniting with each other. And I don't quite understand that. I'm processing that right now. I don't want people to be colorblind. I want people to look at each other and love our differences

and actually be attracted to those differences. And I don't quite understand what this disease is. There is a disease on the right and there is a disease on the left. And it is not pervasive, but I think it's contagious and I think it's afflicting more and more people every day, but it's still a small minority. And Chris, I would say that I represent the massive number of the exhausted majority, not just in the United States, but literally around the world. People who just want decency and respect

I have a chance to put food on the table for their families take them on vacation maybe once a year retire with dignity And have the joy of living a life of pursuits and discovery and love, you know it's not that much and governments have not done a good job of protecting that encouraging it investing in it and enabling it and these on the far right in the far left i think have to be disenfranchised and that's my proposition to americans right now go and vote in the primary change this nonsense breakdown this duopoly and let's demonstrate to the world that it is still possible that's exactly i'm trying to do. possible. That's exactly what I'm trying to do. I do like the idea of the exhausted majority. I think that's a good way to categorize it.

Would you define the problems of the extreme right and the extreme left in different ways? How would you conceptualize those? What is the problem of the extreme right and what is the problem of the extreme left in your perspective? Well, I'll tell you, I think there's actually more that's similar than that's different. I think at the core of this, believe it or not, Chris, is groups of people who believe in their hearts that they have been mistreated and that they've been disenfranchised. On the far right, it's just a very different version of it. On the left, it's a lot of people who are representing legitimate gripes about mistreatment. Black Americans have been horribly mistreated by the United States of America

Slavery was a repulsive policy that should have ended far before it did and it has a long long tail Native Americans were horribly mistreated in this country Muslim Americans Jewish Americans right Hispanic Americans Asian Americans Americans, right? Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, LGBTQ plus Americans, everybody who can feel some degree of animosity, disenfranchisement, persecution, you know, have been mistreated and they have rightful gripes about the need and desire and their rights to be included. So if you look at both sides at the, they're very different circumstances. I believe on the left, I understand that disenfranchisement, that persecution. On the far right, it tends to be more white Americans who feel that they

are being replaced, who feel that somehow their culture is being changed, how they're no longer at some point, the white Americans are going to be the majority, that they're being persecuted, they're being kept down, they're being eliminated. And I think that is actually, interestingly enough, a very kind of a similar ethos that actually connects the far right and the far left. It is this notion of mistreatment. And they're angry. I believe that, like I said, I believe my brothers and sisters on the left, I understand

that better. But on the right, I think in terms of their hearts and minds, that is the root of it. It's this notion of being replaced or being second or being a lower class citizen or something that scares them. When the other side is saying, we've been lower class citizen forever and we just want a fair chance.

But that connects people. I think we just sat back and acknowledged, you know, the human elements of both of these conditions, we could actually have conversations about it. And instead, we do it through television screens, often through anger-tainment or TikTok, and we're only getting further and further pushed into the corners, which is what Alvin Toffler warned us about in Future Shock 50 years ago. I think the problem that people have when you look toward the left and the empathy that is proclaimed to kind of drive the we are helping the underclass we have a ring these people along is that they don't believe that it's genuine empathy.

to compassion is the prioritization of short-term emotional comfort over everything else. So it's saying the good thing whilst doing something which may be bad or giving somebody a solution which in the immediate may make them feel okay, but over the long term could even result in worse outcomes for them. Defund the police, coming from people that live within gated communities. It's all well and good. Saying defund the police when you've got private security or a locked compound or you live in a suburb that doesn't have any crime. They talk about single parent households being no worse for children's outcomes than dual parent households.

It's just factually not true. And it doesn't inform parents, teachers, and their friends about why the kids are behaving in this way. The body positivity movement saying that there's no link between body weight and health outcomes because they don't want to hurt the feelings of people that are overweight, even if it causes them to die sooner, literally to die sooner. That's toxic compassion, prioritization of short-term emotional comfort over everything else in the long term. And I think that that's the skepticism that a lot of people have around the left, that it has been so... It's been the signature move to say the thing, right?

To post the tweet or the square or the whatever it is. And then to forget about what the actual outcomes are and to not even bother to scrutinize these companies, to not bother to scrutinize whether or not BLM are actually taking the money and putting it in anywhere that's supposed to be profitable or useful for the outcomes that they espoused in the beginning? I think what you share is compelling. And anybody who's a parent knows that that's the daily struggle of being a parent. Short-term pain for long-term gain.

How do you incentivize and encourage without diminishing? How do you... People of means. How do you reward your children with enough to start their lives, but not so much that you literally limit their aspirations? Appearance from households that don't have much. How do you manage your kids? How do you give them hope and opportunity when you don't? These are the challenges that I think every community, every household faces, and now we're just talking about it, you know, entire cultures.

And I think you're absolutely right. You know, I think we should be using evidence to enlighten our decision making. I think we should be, even if it's tough love, I think Democrats should be more focused on generating and encouraging and investing in independence. That's why I think we need healthcare for all, housing for all, and education for all. And then once you have the foundation, then it is up to you to either succeed or fail. But I think we should be raising the foundation. I think that's what the left should be doing.

But I see the tug of war you're talking about right now. And I don't think either side has it entirely right. I do think the exhausted majority, which combines elements of conservative principles with more progressive principles, both fiscally and socially, that's where most of it is at. That's where most Americans are at. But we don't have a system that allows such leaders to rise. We have a system that by definition, almost by definition, and by intent, pushes candidates to the further left and further right and then puts voters in the horrifying position of having to choose between

the lesser of two evils, time and time and time again. I just want to have normal conversations, acknowledge the truth, say things that we do have a border crisis, that defund the place is foolish. You can embed social workers in police departments, which we should be doing, but we should not reduce law enforcement, especially in communities that need it the most. I'm coming from Minneapolis, where George Floyd was murdered, where we misunderstood that quiet does not mean peace. You know what I mean, Chris?

We mistook quiet for peace. There's a lot of anger around the world, a lot of anger in this country in America right now, a lot of anger in a lot of communities right now. Just because they're quiet does not mean things are peaceful. So yeah, we got to say the quiet part out loud. We got to stop the nonsense. We got to speak the truth. We got to have people at the table of different perspectives and opinions coming to better conclusions. And we got to do that fast. How to do it fast. What would you say the structural pathologies of the left when you're looking at the democratic institution, the democrat institution, what is it getting wrong? There's obviously this

sort of purity test cannibalism thing that occurs. What is it? From being inside of the machine, what is it that Democrats are getting wrong structurally? Well, I think, first of all, I think, you know, I'm a Democrat because I believe that Hubert Humphrey was my idol. And he said, the moral test of a government is how it treats those in the dawn of life, the dusk of life, and in the shadows of life. I think that is the fundamental role of government, to protect those that need defense and support, and to look out for those who are struggling. And I do think Democrats generally come

from a position of fairness, pointing out inequities on fair circumstances and trying to fight for fairness. But I also believe that Democrats, the left, if you will, are employing stereotyping just as dangerously as any group. I believe the lack of willingness to look at talent, to look at possibility, versus just looking at categories or identities.

I think that's hard for a country that prides itself on being a multicultural bastion where meritocracy should be ultimately the goal. Whereas certain communities, I think, do need a little extra boost, not a hand out, but a hand up. I think that's not unreasonable. But I do, look, I know, not I think, I know that Democrats are being subject to the very, some of the very disenfranchising, dangerous practices that we have long accused the right of practicing.

And that means stereotyping, and that means not looking at people for who they really are, rather just what they represent. And I think that's dangerous. And at the end of the day, Chris, this all comes back to the same thing. If we don't create space and place for human beings to get to know each other, we're going to lose, particularly in an era in which we are so able to self-select, not just with whom we live and eat and pray and sleep and think, But even where we spend our virtual time, we can micro-target just to be surrounded by people who see things and think exactly the same way.

Not only is that a boring life, if you ask me, it's a really dangerous condition that I think needs an antidote. And I think people like you and people like me and I think people who are watching right now can all play a little bit of a role in doing something over the next year that maybe opens up the opportunity to break bread with someone who see things differently or looks differently or praise differently. And there we can actually leave some change and maybe end this nonsense. I observed this really interesting. Dynamic occur with a lady called Melissa Carney. So she works

out of Washington, actually. She is a statistician, demographer, looking largely at the outcomes of single-parent households. And she just wrote a book called The Two-Parent Advantage. The clue is in the title. This is the difference between single parent and dual parent household outcomes. I pushed her quite hard on the episode to try and get out over her statistician skis and think about mechanisms like what is it that's going on. So get it, you know, a little bit of bro psychology. She was fine to sort of give theories, but she was very reticent about saying, you know, this is not my area of expertise, so on and so forth. So what I'm saying is that she wrote a book that was planned to try and inform people coming from single parent households, people considering it, people working through relationships and marriages and family life and so on and so forth,

to better understand why the outcomes that they're looking at and why the dynamics and phenomena that they're looking at are the ones that are happening. And when I asked her to get out over her skis, she said no. So she was very aware of her own restrictions. Before her book went live on Twitter, just the title of the book was released. No one had seen a galley copy. No one had seen a review copy, nothing like that. And she was destroyed, mostly by people from the left left for this is conservative thinking being repurposed. This is, you know, back to a Christian nation, all this sort of stuff. It's derogating people from underprivileged, like working class backgrounds, etc, etc, etc. And what I saw was a lady who when I spoke to her on the show, very touchy feely,

didn't ask her about her politics, but I would guess that she's probably centre-left. And I saw online the exact dynamic that we've observed occur publicly with tons of people that the Democrats and the left have made life so inhospitable to anybody who doesn't toe the party line, even if they actually do, but it doesn't sound sufficiently like they do because of that toxic compassion thing where you need to say the thing upfront that sounds right, even if in the long run it results in bad outcomes. And as you inevitably meet the ire of your own side, you inevitably get welcomed by the other side. So I observed, I didn't see this happen with Melissa. I'm not saying that she's like swung right and she's now going to be employed by the daily wire or something but I saw the only support that was available for this lady that had written a very well thought out very meaningful book and she wasn't prepared to get out over a ski she wasn't trying to play a game of blah blah blah And I saw this Like you know purity spiral witch hunt lambastor and then the only side that's left open is the opposite. So, you know, there is this sort of polarity where people just swing straight back

across and go across the other side. Because it's like, Hey, guess what? The, you know, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. And if my ex friend turns out to actually become my enemy, I'm going to go where I'm welcomed. That's totally. And by the way, two things you just shared have personal intersections with me starting with single parent households. My, my, my father died when I was six months old. And, you know, in Vietnam, I was raised by my mother for three years alone. We lived with my great grandparents. Yeah, I've explored my personality and how those three years without a father

affected me. They did. I'd be lying if I didn't tell you they didn't. Would it be better for every child in the world to grow up in a nurturing, loving, safe, secure household with two parents? It doesn't even matter if it's a mom and dad, if you ask me, but a nurturing household with love and support. Yes, of course.

Do I think government can incentivize that or make that happen? No, I think people have to. This is my argument, Chris, is we have to start rebuilding communities. And I think that starts with rebuilding the foundation so that people have a chance that we have healthcare and housing, education for all.

And that way we have raised the foundation, we can change that. But here's the other thing. When I, after October 7th, what happened in Israel, I got a lot more texts and calls. This is before I declared my candidacy for president. I got more texts and calls from my Republican colleagues, just saying I got you in my mind. I'm so horrified by what happened in Israel and I know the Jewish diaspora must be suffering. I only got like two from my Democratic colleagues. And then when I went back for votes after declaring my campaign for president, my Democratic colleagues greeted me warmly.

But my Republican colleagues came up to me and looked me in the eyes and said, man, your courage, I got to tell you, wow. So what you just said is I'm human. I'm adept enough and mature enough and have enough life experience to process some of these circumstances. So I'm not becoming a Republican tomorrow, but I see exactly what you just shared in practice

as a human being. And when you drive people out of your tribe, of course, they're gonna affiliate with the other side. Liz Cheney did that with us. When she was pushed out of the Republican conference, she started hanging out on our side. And you know what? She started voting with us a little bit more. And you know what?

I did an advertisement for her last campaign. Who would have thought that? Because I saw her principle on full display. So all I'm saying is there's a lot of truth out there, but you got to dig for it. And you got to open your heart and mind. And my goodness, I'm learning things every day. Some things that I kind of thought were true, other things that have shocked me because I was on the totally wrong side of fact.

And it's been a joyful experience. I just want to maybe end with that because I got to get running, Chris. But if I have a message for anybody, look beyond. Go broad, right? Not just in your reading and your Googling and your podcasting, but find people and do things that open your mind and make you see things differently and lead with decency. If we all did that just a little bit better, my goodness, the things we can learn and the places we can go, and I can't wait to help lead us there. Dean Phillips, I appreciate you. Thank you for today.

As I do you, Chris, be well and keep the faith.