No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen - CNN's Trump town hall leads to surprise bad news for CNN

Episode Date: May 14, 2023

CNN's Trump town hall backfires spectacularly. Brian interviews the congressman for New York’s 10th congressional district and lead impeachment counsel for Trump’s first impeachment, Daniel Goldman, about his thoughts on that town hall, whether he believes the DOJ probes into Trump are taking too long, his response to the George Santos arrest, and his message to voters on the GOP’s obsession with a now-debunked Hunter Biden investigation.Donate to the "Don't Be A Mitch" fund: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/dontbeamitchShop merch: https://briantylercohen.com/shopYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/briantylercohenTwitter: https://twitter.com/briantylercohenFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/briantylercohenInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/briantylercohenPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/briantylercohenNewsletter: https://www.briantylercohen.com/sign-upWritten by Brian Tyler CohenProduced by Sam GraberRecorded in Los Angeles, CASee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Today we're going to be talking about Trump's CNN Town Hall, how it ended up backfiring and how the media should be covering him. And I interview the congressman for New York's 10th congressional district and lead impeachment counsel for Trump's first impeachment, Daniel Goldman, about his thoughts on that town hall, whether he believes the DOJ probes and the Trump are taking too long, his response to the George Santos arrest, and his message to voters on the GOP's obsession with a now debunked Hunter Biden investigation. I'm Brian Tyler Cohen, and you're listening to No Lie.

So there's something that's been bothering me about the CNN Town Hall with Trump, aside from the obvious, you know, platforming a guy who even CNN hosts admitted they couldn't fact check. But I've been thinking about this a lot, and what's been bothering me the most is this sense of continued betrayal from our institutions that we've been conditioned to believe work. Like, whether naively or not, I've always viewed an outlet like CNN as having the best interests of journalism in mind, as that being the preeminent theme there. But what's become clear to me, again, probably very naively, is that with this town hall, CNN has basically dropped the pretense that what it's doing is for the benefit of journalism first and foremost.

Like, there's not a person on the planet who can't see what that town hall was. It was a money grab, a ratings grab. And that was bad enough on its own because it basically lifted the veil on the fact that they're operating very clearly as a for-profit entity. Like, they'll shroud themselves in this cloak of journalistic integrity and blah, blah, blah, blah. but they are a business. They're operating as a business. And when their desire to make money is in conflict with their journalistic principles, they're going to err on the side of money. And I'm sure there are people saying, yeah, dude, brilliant catch. A business is going to operate as a business. And again, I get it. Maybe that's how CNN always operated and I just couldn't see it. That's

certainly possible. But I guess it's their previous discretion that fooled me. But in any case, they're certainly not interested in that discretion anymore. And so that was bad enough unto itself. that this titan of journalism will discard their principles the moment they need to. But what was immediately worse was this effort by some folks at CNN to then pretend, like pretend that this was somehow justifiable or necessary. Like CNN hosted a Trump rally. They filled the audience with Trump supporters. They faced him with a moderator who was not capable of holding him to account.

And yet here's what CNN's CEO Chris Lick said. Quote, you do not have to like the former president's answers, but you can't say we didn't get them. Caitlin pressed him again and again and made news, made a lot of news, and that's our job. While we may all have been uncomfortable hearing people clapping, that was also an important part of the story because those folks represent a large swath of America. America was served very well by what we did last night. And here's just a brief clip of what Anderson Cooper had to say along those same lines.

Now, many of you think CNN shouldn't have given him any platform to speak, and I understand the anger about that, giving him the audience, the time, I get that. But this is what I also get. the man you were so disturbed to see and hear from last night, that man is the frontrunner for the Republican nomination for president. And according to polling, no other Republican is even close. That man you were so upset to hear from last night, he may be president of the United States in less than two years.

And that audience that upset you, that's a sampling of about half the country. They are your family members, your neighbors, and they are voting. And many said they're voting for him. Now, maybe you haven't been paying attention to him since he left office. Maybe you've been enjoying not hearing from him thinking it can't happen again. Some investigation is going to stop him.

Well, it hasn't so far. So if last night showed anything, it showed it can happen again. It is happening again. He hasn't changed, and he is running hard. You have every right to be outraged today and angry and never watched this network again. But do you think staying in your silo and only listening to people you agree, with is going to make that person go away? I'm sorry, but talk about tortured responses, all to parade CNN around like they put on a

like a symposium on thermonuclear physics. It was a Trump rally. They made a Trump rally. This wasn't some historic news event. It was a bunch of Trump supporters who fucking applauded when Trump attacked a woman who one day earlier he was found liable of having sexually abused. A bunch of Trump supporters who applauded when Trump mocked CNN's own moderator. So CNN can dress up this pig with all the lipstick in the world, but it is.

still a pig. And the worst part is that everyone knows it. And yet still CNN is pretending. The only thing worse than the naked ratings grab is then playing make-belief in pretending that it wasn't all what we know it was. And here's the worst part for CNN. They got 3.3 million viewers. Yes, that is like eight times what they normally get. But according to Brian Stelter, former CNN reporter, on the day after the town hall, quote, the network returned to its usual ratings levels on Thursday, averaging 538,000. viewers in prime time. No retention from the night before. In other words, they netted no long-term benefit. No new viewers, no mass exodus of right-wing fox watchers, just a torched reputation

for some fleeting one-night event that didn't even exceed viewership for the last town hall that Joe Biden did. Like, I cannot imagine a planet on which this was worth it. The fact is that there is a way to cover Trump. And first and foremost, it is to make sure that you're doing it in a way that you're able to push back on his lies. And there are people who can do it in real time. and Swan did it in that Axios interview. I understand that it's not easy. And look, if someone isn't able to fact-check him in real time, then the solution is simple.

Don't put yourself in a situation where you're allowing yourself to get steamrolled by the guy. That's all. If you know that he's going to use whatever platform you give him to spread disinformation and spew hateful rhetoric and make people unsafe and incite violence, then don't do it. We already know what the natural conclusion of platforming his lies are. The guy incited an insurrection on the U.S. Capitol. People died that day.

So we don't have to sit around here and pretend that he's some disciple of God and that when he speaks, we have no choice but to listen. He is a run-of-the-mill white-collar criminal who's conned his supporters into believing his lies. That's all. And we don't have to willfully participate in his schemes because of some misguided allegiance to norms. This is not a typical situation and we cannot respond to it with typical solutions. And I don't say that being biased in favor of the left. I say that being biased in favor of democracy. This shouldn't be partisan politics.

Donald Trump is an existential threat to democracy in the future of this country. And if you're treating him the same way you treated like Barack Obama, then you are part of the problem. And CNN and other news networks who seek to normalize this guy are absolutely part of the problem. So if ever there was a pitch for independent media or progressive media, this is it. Because after what we've been through, if news outlets are still guided by the same both sidesism, then they are missing the plot. So, you know, with that said, thank you for listening. This is independent media. I appreciate it.

And hopefully the defections in their audience that CNN is seeing is sending a pretty clear message that we're not going to be party to these attacks on our democracy just because certain outlets want to profit from it. Next up is my interview with Congressman Daniel Goldman. Now we've got the congressman for New York's 10th congressional district and the lead counsel for Trump's first impeachment, Daniel Goldman. Thanks so much for coming on. Thank you for having me, Brian.

Great to be here. So we've already endured four years of Trump in office, along with a media that was largely unequipped to deal with him. Now, since then, to a degree, we've learned how to cover him. And yet, this past week, we watched us, CNN basically reverted back to naked ratings grabs with a town hall that allowed him to kind of spew his lies largely unchecked. Now, you of all people are pretty intimately familiar with Trump's lies, having, again, you know, led that first impeachment trial.

What was your reaction to CNN basically putting on a Trump rally? Yeah, I mean, I think my reaction was a couplefold. The first is, it is beyond me why they would have an audience filled with Trump supporters for what is supposed to be a town hall. That created a really slanted rally-like environment. And it also, I think, curtailed Caitlin Connoll, Collins' ability to actually challenge and question Donald Trump because she had to deal with the crowd and then he would jump in. I didn't watch the whole thing, but I watched a little bit of it in some clips.

But the other thing that jumps out at this is, at me, is that this is the same old playbook. This man has not only not learned anything, but he has doubled, tripled, quadrupled down. And to the extent that he was a danger to our democracy, to our national security, while he was president, if he were to become president again, given the answers and responses that he had last night, I sincerely believe that it will be the end of our democracy as we know it. And so in some ways, we can talk about CNN and whether they should have platformed him and all of that. But really, the substance was so jarring and jolting to me to hear him continue to repeat the big lie,

to say that January 6th was a beautiful day to refuse to say that he supports Ukraine against Russia's entirely unjust invasion where they are killing children. And he won't say that Putin is a war criminal. I mean, the list goes on and on. and obviously to repeat the lies about E. Jean Carroll that he was found liable for. He was found liable for defamation for saying that he did not sexually abuse E. Jean Carroll and literally the day after he goes ahead and says that exact same lie makes fun of her. This man is horrible in every way and a real danger to not only our democracy, but our society in general. Yeah. On that point, you know, Trump has responded to his loss in civil court against E. Jean Carroll with a raft of new statements recently. He even suggested with the help of his lawyers that she made up the whole thing by kind of lifting it from an episode of Law and Order SVU. How does that impact Trump's ongoing litigation in that case? Because there is still another defamation claim that's coming before Judge Kaplan to be litigated.

Look, you had a jury of nine people. And I was a trial lawyer. We used to have juries of 12 in criminal cases. But you had a jury of nine people that reached a unanimous verdict. Do you know how hard it is to find nine people to agree on anything? And there was a proper process for Donald Trump to make all of these arguments. He chose not to do it. And he chose not to do it most likely because he would not. not be able, his lies and his explanations would not be able to withstand scrutiny under cross-examination. And as has always been the case with him, he will make whatever arguments he thinks he has to the public where he can't really be challenged about them. But when he gets inside a courtroom, he consistently loses. And that is something that is important to remember as those of us in Congress and around the country worry about strengthening the rule of law. Our rule of law is stronger than people realize once you get in that courtroom. It is the attack on the rule of law from outside of our court system that is really in jeopardy. To that point, you know, you were

a prosecutor at SDNY, I believe, correct? Yes. Do you feel that the DOJ probe into both the classified documents and the insurrection on January 6th are taking too long or judging by what little public information we have, is this an appropriate amount of time? Because, you know, like you said, for for for the rest of us on the outside there's really no insight into how long this should take but you take the george santos indictment for example and at at one point in his rambling screed he did say how is it possible that i can be indicted so quickly and that was the only part that i agreed with because it does seem like in an instance where you do have this low level albeit very clownish uh congressman in george santos and when there is a problem there was an indictment

there were those 13 charges that were passed down relatively quickly. And I only say relatively because the only schema we have for this stuff is that apparently it takes years and years and years for any prosecution to be completed. So again, I guess going back to that question is, do you think this is an appropriate amount of time or do you feel like it is taking too long? Well, I think it took a little too long to begin the investigation into Donald Trump and his associates for overturning the election. But that was for good reason, which was that the Department of Justice was focused on the violent insurrection who invaded the Capitol on January 6th.

And they wanted to dismantle people who were dangers to the public safety and dangers to the public through violence, such as the 3% or oathkeepers, et cetera, proud boys. So there is that element of it, which I think delayed the start of that intensive investigation. But it's very important to remember that a criminal case does not brought after you have one witness come in and give you incriminating evidence. And then you say, oh, all right, we got it. Let's go charge tomorrow. And I think a lot of people after watching the January 6th hearings felt very much like that should happen. But as powerful and excellent as those hearings were, they were small snippets of much longer depositions and testimony. without any cross-examination, without any consideration of the rules of evidence that apply in a

court of law, and without any legal standard that they needed in order to prove a case, such as beyond a reasonable doubt, as you would have in a criminal case. So when you are actually investigating a criminal case, you need to understand the full universe of witnesses and what they would say. And every time you interview a witness, they often give you another lead and something else to track down. Plus, we know that a lot of the close associates of Donald Trump and Donald Trump himself are putting up legal blocks to testimony from others that have to be litigated through the courts. So it is important, I think, for all of your viewers and listeners to understand that criminal investigations generally do take a long time, and especially the conspiracy to overturn the election

where there are so many different prongs of that effort and so many different witnesses. On the contrary, What I was struck by the George Santos indictment is how simple it was and how simple and flagrant and brazen his schemes were. This was an incredibly unsophisticated crime where essentially you get the documents, you get the bank documents, you get the other records by subpoena, and you can pretty much put together a strong case based on those documents alone. And perhaps there wasn't a couple of inside witnesses that were able to provide some context to those documents. But they didn't even address, I think, many of the more significant issues that have been called into question about George Santos, including the $700,000 that he gave to his own campaign. So what I view the Santos indictment to be is an expedited indictment based on the easiest charges to prove. And there may be more investigation to come after that, but because he's a sitting congressman, they wanted to move quickly.

And I agree with that. On the George Santos thing, do you think, you know, you've been heavily involved, you delivered an ethics complaint to George Santos's office back in January, I believe. Do you think that George Santos should resign because I know there are a lot of calls for him to do so? Or do you think that there's more value in him sticking around to basically serve as an albatross around Republicans next? Because I think it's clear that he's not an especially potent tool for Republicans going into this next election. I think George Santos should have resigned long ago once he admitted that he deceived his voters in order to get the seat in Congress. I think he should

have resigned yesterday after he was charged criminally, including for some additional lies that have now been charged in an indictment, George Santos does not belong in Congress. And I think from my perspective, as somebody who is really fighting to bolster and buoy our democratic institutions, that includes Congress, that includes the Supreme Court, that includes the FBI and the intelligence community

and the State Department and so many of our executive agencies that are, for some reason, attack by Donald Trump and those who support him, we need to be living up to the highest standards. And George Santos does not belong walking in the halls of Congress. He is a con, a fraud, and a liar, and he lied his way into his seat in Congress, and he needs to go immediately. So I don't buy into the sort of political game theory of, well, maybe it would be better to have, George Santos, so Democrats can make the argument of Republicans. Just like I don't buy into the argument that it's better to have Donald Trump as the Republican nominee because there's a better

chance that Joe Biden will win. We need to root out authoritarian, autocrats, and those who are anti-democratic from the entire political and public arena so that we can get back to being the great democracy that we are. And we need to do that every day. I just want to go back. ask one more question on the Trump of it all in terms of the legal stuff. And that is, is there an impending case, in your opinion, whether it's at the DOJ or Fulton County or the New York AG's office, where you think that Trump has a viable defense for any of these impending indictments? Oh, I could sit here and come up with defense. You know, I think any lawyer probably could do that. And, you know, Donald Trump, like many mob bosses that I prosecuted, is careful. He doesn't write

emails. He doesn't write texts. He speaks in code. He sends subliminal messages that he knows how they'll be received. So it's harder to prove a case against Donald Trump than it is against someone, say, someone like George Santos, you know, who makes just bald-faced lies and very blatant and obvious fraud schemes. So without getting into all the details and the facts of each of the investigations, there's certainly a defense. And that's the other thing is these witnesses, you know, don't just go in on direct examination where the prosecutors get to bring out, you know,

the incriminating evidence. They also get a cross-examined. And the defense also has an opportunity to present a case and to present an alternative. alternative theory. That's what makes our system work. And that's what should be happening in the Manhattan DA's office, not having Congress try to intervene as a personal defense attorney to Donald Trump. But that's what our system relies on so that we make sure that the vast majority of people, and it's sad that I have to say the vast majority as opposed to everyone, because in some places it doesn't work this way, but that people who are convicted actually

did commit the crimes. Now, I want to move ahead, I guess, to the horse race of it all, looking ahead to 2024. I'm sure you've been faced with the question of Biden's age. How do you reconcile the age question with the danger of someone like Donald Trump? Well, look at President Biden's record. Last Congress was one of the most consequential congresses in a couple generations, with some of the most significant and meaningful legislation that was passed, that is going to dramatically improve the lives

of the American people across the board. And people want to focus on his age, but when you look at him at the state of the union and you look at what he's been able to accomplish, his track record is incredibly impressive. And so I'm looking forward as a member of Congress to be able to help to implement all of the incredible legislation that was passed in the last Congress

So that because there's a delay once a bill is passed before it gets executed and implemented. And so we're now starting to see infrastructure projects being started all over the country. We're seeing some of the green subsidies that were in the Inflation Reduction Act start to be used by businesses. We're seeing some businesses get benefits from the Chips and Semiconductor Act. We're starting to see a lot of the benefits of this legislation. And I'm excited for the American people to start to really internalize and understand firsthand all of the significant achievements that President Biden has delivered to this point. So I'm very proud to support him.

I think he's done a fantastic job. And I look forward to making that case to the American people. Yeah, I think that's a great point, especially in terms of looking at just what he's done. Like we're sitting here, I guess, I guess the, you know, the punditry of it all is just kind sitting here wondering whether he'll be able to do the job as if he hasn't already done it, as if we haven't already had, you know, the most effective last few years of any presidential term in modern American history, whether it's from adding, you know, almost 13 million jobs, which is more jobs in two years than any presidents had in four to chips, to pact, to the

American Rescue Plan, to the Inflation Reduction Act. So I think the, like you said, the record speaks for itself. With that said, you're serving right now in a Republican-led house that took power amid promises to tackle inflation and lowering high costs. Instead, we've seen that Republican majority descend pretty much into endless investigations into Hunter Biden. What would your message to voters be after witnessing this bait and switch? Well, it's not even just the investigations. It's also the legislation that they are putting forward, which is, you know, anti-abortion, anti-trans, anti-green energy, you know, promoting fossil fuels. This week we have a draconian immigration bill

that would essentially gut our asylum system, spend billions and billions of dollars on an ineffective wall. And there's no effort to do anything in a bipartisan way. So these are all messaging bills that have no chance of going anywhere. But they're making no effort to work across the aisle, either of the Senate Democrats or the president to pass meaningful legislation that will help the American people. They're just trying to use the legislative process as a political arm for the 2024 campaign. And that's before you get to all these investigations, which are a whole lot of hot air. And there's plenty of hot air that is coming from the Republicans, but there's very little facts and evidence to support any of it.

And so, you know, they can attack a private citizen who's the president's son all they want, but how can they not realize that the most recent president has a son-in-law who was an official in the White House and used the relationships in whatever ways we don't know in order to solicit $2.5 billion of investment in a private equity firm that he's ill-equipped to run? you look at Ivanka Trump and all of the copyrights that she got from China while she was working in the presidency. Why are we focused so much on a civilian child of the president when we had children of the president who were based on nepotism alone, took jobs in the White House and used those jobs for financial gain. So it's ridiculous that we're focused on this stuff. And I think ultimately, not only are these investigations going nowhere, but I suspect that the majority

of the American people realize that it's completely out of bounds and purely just using this as propaganda. Yeah, there was one moment, too, where Don Jr. and Eric claimed that they would be doing no new foreign deals while their dad was in office. I think they brought in $100 million in foreign deals while he was president. Just this past week, it became clear in the Oversight Committee that Republicans' own report showed no wrongdoing. by Biden. And yet, James Comer, the Republican chair of the Oversight Committee, he was on Fox claiming that he'll still be looking for some link that, as far as we know right now, still doesn't exist. Can I have your response to that? It's shocking to see the rhetoric that's coming out of the

Republicans based on what they have produced, talking about public corruption at the highest order and all this Biden crime family stuff. First of all, let's be clear. What they have is some corporate entities, which presumably had business deals with foreign entities, received money, and then distributed that money to other individuals, very possibly and likely investors in that corporate entity. I mean, this happens millions, you know, thousands and thousands of times every day. But what they don't have is any link to the president. And yet they're acting as if the president is some kind of mob boss overseeing a,

racketeering enterprise trying to do business or, I mean, even worse, to use, you know, to essentially get paid by foreign governments in return for policy decisions. They haven't found an iota of that. There is nothing wrong with the private citizen doing business in China. And in fact, we know that. We know that the Republicans believe that because Donald Trump had a Chinese bank account until 2018 while he was president. So let's get off our high horse. Let's stop exaggerating what we found in order to support your baseless accusations. And let's get back to doing the business that we're supposed to be here to do.

Yeah, that's perfectly put. Is there any acknowledgement from your Republican colleagues in the House that their abortion bans and their book bans and their LGBT pans don't exactly comport with, you know, their claims to be the party of freedom? Well, it's very interesting. I mean, the hypocrisy that comes from the Republicans is perhaps the only through line in everything that they do. But I'm very interested to see how this proceeds because you clearly have the fringe

right of the Republican Party that has control over the speaker and leadership. And part of the reason I think we're seeing all of these extremist MAGA bills on the floor is because that is who is in control of the Republican Party. But you have a lot of frontline Republicans who cannot go back to their districts and win on Hunter Biden's laptop. They're going to have to show their more moderate constituents that they've actually delivered results and that abortion bans do not help, that the tax on trans do not help. These culture wars banning books, that is not going to help them.

And so they've been quiet to this point, but I'm very interested to see at what point they stop being so quiet because they will likely lose if they continue on this track. Yeah. And there doesn't seem to be any indication that they'd be changing gear. Also, there's more than a dozen of those Republicans who are currently serving in districts that Biden himself won. And yet all we've seen thus far are more abortion bans, more book bans, like an entire legislative agenda completely predicated on attacks on trans kids and LGBT people. so, you know, it doesn't look like anybody's a changing course there. On to, I guess, something more serious here, we've got the debt crisis looming. If the debt ceiling isn't lifted, the U.S. will default for the first time in our country's history. What do you think is the most likely resolution here?

Well, I think there's only one resolution that should occur. There's only one responsible resolution, which is to lift the debt limit in a clean way. If they want to talk about budget and reducing spending, let's do that through ordinary course of budget and appropriations negotiations, which happens later on this year. The debt limit is something entirely different from the budget. The debt limit is just simply whether we pay our bills from legislation and spending that we have already agreed to, 25% of which was agreed to during Donald Trump's presidency, when the Republicans had no problem lifting the debt limit, three,

times. So what instead they're trying to do is extort the Democrats and the American people to try to extract concessions because they believe that Democrats are the more responsible party and are more likely to make sure that the full faith and credit of the United States is not impacted by this brinksmanship and extortion. And so they're essentially just relying on their own bad faith and knowing that the Democrats are good faith actors and care a lot more about these issues that matter to the American people and are more responsible are the adults in the room and they're trying to extract concessions. And that is completely out of bounds. It's completely inappropriate and it is a total abuse of their power and authority in order to do that.

So there's really only one path that should work out. You know, I'm not in these discussions between the leaders in both houses and the president and his team. But I can tell you that we are very unified on the Democratic side to say that there's only one thing to do here, which is to pay our bills. Let's do that. Is there any worry, though, going back to that CNN town hall, Trump basically signaled to his entire party that he wouldn't raise the, the debt ceiling, that he would allow the U.S. to default. Is there any worry that kind of his party will take that as sacrosan, take that as an order from their leader and basically kind of redouble their efforts in terms of not lifting the debt ceiling because now they've been

told by their leader what to do. They've been given their marching orders by this guy. Yeah, look what happened when he directed the Republicans to interfere in the Manhattan District Attorney's investigation of Donald Trump. They jumped the next day and did it. And It's so irresponsible and so typical because Donald Trump cares only about himself. He does not care about anyone else or anything else. And what he said at the CNN Town Hall about the debt limit, like, yeah, default, it's nothing. It's no big deal. They'll cave.

You know, he views it as like, let's just negotiate as a negotiating tool and he's, you know, willing to go to the brink. But yes, the problem is that it's not just Donald Trump himself. It is a House Republican Party that is. controlled by Donald Trump and his supporters and his associates. And so there's always a concern that they will do that. It will come back to bite them. But there's certainly a concern that they'll do that.

Do you feel like the most likely resolution here is the discharge petition and getting five Republicans to sign on to that? It's really hard to, you know, handicap what the most likely resolution is. I think our expectation is that at some point, it's going to get to the point where the Speaker of the House realizes that this is not the right pathway to go. I still hold out hope that the majority of Republicans will push on the leader to rebuff the extremists in his party and to do the right thing by passing a clean debt limit and dealing with the budget at a later time.

I want to finish off with this because I think this isn't especially important issue. You know, we've continued to watch mass mass shooting surge in this country. Is there any legislation in the pipe that you feel that Republicans in the House might have an appetite for? You know, if I had any way of figuring out what goes through Republicans' mind on the issue of mass shootings and gun violence, I would love to figure that out. It is one of the most bewildering and aggravating aspects of this Republican Party. We have children

dying every day through the use of weapons of war. And the notion that, and the American people overwhelmingly support common sense gun safety legislation, the numbers are staggering. You cannot find any issue where 90% of the American people agree on, except for universal background checks. And so many of these other common sense legislative ideas are also overwhelmingly supported by the American people. And this is a public health emergency. This is an epidemic of extreme proportions. Gun violence is now the leading cause of death for children in this country. Just think about that. More children die from guns than anything else. It is unacceptable. It is inhumane. And it absolutely just drives me crazy that somehow the NRA had gun manufacturers and gun dealers

have so pocketed Republicans that they that they won't do anything on this. And I'm just so tired of hearing, oh, more guns is the answer. Of course, more guns is not the answer. You know, look around the world. That's obvious. And, you know, that that's really, it's the mental health issues. It's not the mental health issues. if these people who have mental health issues don't have access to AR-15s, they will not commit a mass

shooting with an AR-15. So, yes, we have to address mental health issues, but that's not the cause of the gun violence, it's the guns. And so we on the Democratic side are thinking very hard about ways to bring this to the floor, and this is going to be a huge issue for the remainder of this Congress. Well, I think that's a good place to leave off. So, Congressman, thank you for taking the time. I appreciate it. Brian, great to be with you. Thanks so much. Thanks again to Congressman Goldman. That's it for this episode. Talk to you next week.

You've been listening to No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen. Produced by Sam Graber, music by Wellesie, interviews captured and edited for YouTube and Facebook by Nicholas Nicotera, and recorded in Los Angeles, California. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe on your preferred podcast app. Feel free to leave a five-star rating and a review, and check out Brian Tyler Cohen.com for links to all of my other channels.

Thank you.