No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen - Elon's political debut... against kids with cancer

Episode Date: December 22, 2024

Elon's political debut... against kids with cancerElon Musk makes his debut into politics by stripping out childhood cancer research funding. Brian interviews Senator Brian Schatz about Trump's extreme Cabinet nominees and how Democrats should message moving forward. And David Hogg, co-founder of March for Our Lives, joins to discuss his run for DNC Vice Chair.Shop 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 talk about Elon Musk's debut into politics and how he overplayed his hand. And I've got two interviews. I talked to Senator Brian Schatz about Trump's extreme cabinet nominees and how Democrats should message moving forward. And I'm joined by David Hogg, the co-founder of March for Our Lives, about his run for DNC vice chair. I'm Brian Tyler Cohen, and you're listening to No Lie. Okay, so a lot has happened in the last few days with the government narrowly avoiding a shutdown. But as expected, there is a ton of misinformation surrounding Elon Musk, pediatric cancer research funding, and the impending government shutdown. So here's what actually happened. Democrats and Republicans had initially negotiated a CR, a continuing resolution, as a stopgap measure to keep the government funded and open.

Pretty standard stuff. At the 11th hour, President Musk decided to swoop in and run a 20-hour scorched earth pressure campaign torching the bill. Why? Probably because he's desperate for attention and power and wanted to flex. And shockingly, Trump was perfectly content to see the spotlight, which I guess is what $400 billion buys you. So now Republicans have to scramble because Elon says that he'll fund primary challengers to anyone who doesn't tow the line of dear leader and his human checkbook. Republicans introduced a new bill after Elon demanded cuts, only this one stripped a bunch of massively important and bipartisan health care provisions, like, for example, the Gabriella Miller Kids First Research Act 2.0, which allocated seven more years of research funding into pediatric.

cancer. And there was other provisions, too. The Give Kids a Chance Act, which provides for pediatric studies of new cancer drugs. The Innovations in Pediatric Drugs Act, which provides penalties when drug companies don't complete their required pediatric studies, which may not be lucrative enough for these companies to do on their own. The Accelerating Access to Care Act, which streamlines out-of-state treatment for medically complex kids on Medicaid, and on and on, right? So the point is that a bunch of health care-related provisions were excised from the CR. And Elon applauded the new slim-down version. In other words, had it not been for Elon,

there would still be pediatric cancer funding in the bill. That is what Elon did with his political debut. He attacked a bipartisan CR, forced cuts, and applauded a new bill that basically said, fuck kids with cancer. And of course, predictably, that rubbed everyone pretty terribly. Senator Brian Schott, who, incidentally, you'll hear from in a few minutes as one of my guests this week,

he took to Twitter writing, fuck cancer, especially pediatric cancer, these people want to punish these precious little kids to pay for tax cuts for the wealthiest corporations in human history. And you might have heard this response from Chris Hayes on air. They cut nearly $200 million in funding for,

ready for this, childhood cancer research called the Gabriela Miller Kids First Pediatric Research Program. That's what they cut. That program was established, on a bipartisan basis under President Obama. Former Republican leader Eric Cantor

was one of the driving forces behind it. Republicans tore the funding for that program out of the bill, seemingly at random, because Elon Musk told them to. So I want to be clear about what's happened, what's transpired in the last 24 hours, okay? The richest man in the world worth $250 billion,

took $190 million away from $290 million dollars away from kids with cancer. That's not hyperbole. It's not exaggeration. That is what has happened. Now, did Elon himself go in and tell the authors to strip childhood cancer research funding? I can't say one way or the other. But what is clear is that there would have been childhood cancer research funding had it not

been for Elon who expressly called for cuts and then applauded them when they were enacted. So if you're looking for the person responsible, you found him. which, of course, predictably, led to a chorus of Elon fanboys and right-wing provocateurs on Twitter, pointing out that the Gabriela Miller Kids First Research Act 2.0 was actually passed by the House earlier this year and that it languished in the Senate and that, in fact, if Democrats wanted this bill so badly, they should have brought it up for a vote. And that's a nice talking point. But the way the Senate works is that unless the bill passes with unanimous consent,

meaning every single senator, even a single senator can object and gum up the work. That means even a bill like this that would otherwise have 99 votes in favor could take weeks to pass. It eats up valuable floor time for an otherwise uncontroversial bill. That floor time comes at the expense of other priorities, like, for example, confirming judges. And Democrats just confirmed 235 judges, which is one more than Trump confirmed in his first term. Here's Sheldon White House explaining exactly that in the context of judges getting confirmed. I also want to thank Chuck Schumer, because getting... them through committee only get you half the way. You need to give the floor time to get the

votes and nothing is more precious to a majority leader than floor time. So Chuck dedicating the floor time to this project has really been significant. Quote, you need to give the floor time to get the votes and nothing is more precious to a majority leader than floor time to do that. And so you can see how spending 30 hours debating an uncontroversial pediatric cancer research funding bill has an opportunity cost on the Senate floor, since the Republican senators like Rand Paul, who, by the way, did object to this bill, can use it to hold precious Democratic floor time hostage. So instead, Democrats use their floor time for judges, knowing full well that they could simply add this very bipartisan, very uncontroversial

bill to the omnibus package at the end of the year. And that's exactly what they did. And this isn't new. It happens every year. It is completely normal. So they, added it to the bipartisan continuing resolution, and because it's childhood cancer funding, of course it should go in the CR. That is why it's there. To catch up on priorities that Congress didn't have dozens of hours to burn, but which clearly have enough support from both parties that it should pass with no problem. All of which is to say, this isn't some example of Chuck Schumer torpedoing kids' research

funding. Schumer knew that if it couldn't pass by unanimous consent, that he could simply put it in the CR, and that is exactly what he did. meaning the only person here who was actually responsible for shipping pediatric cancer research funding from this bill was President Musk. Again, that is what he decided to do with his official debut into politics to be the reason that childhood cancer research wasn't funded. This is what you get with Republican leadership. And when I say Republican leadership, I mean Elon Musk, the new god king of the GOP. You get an unelected oligarch so aggressively out of touch that he would take an axe to cancer research funding for kids.

Now, luckily, the Senate was able to pass the Gabriela Miller Kids First Research Act 2.0 by unanimous consent in the Senate as a stand-alone bill after Democratic Senator Tim Cain got Republican Senator Rand Paul to finally drop his objection. That's the only reason that this funding is going to go through. After the Republican human wallet got it stripped from the CR and after another Republican Senator Rand Paul stopped objecting. The only reason this funding will be allocated is because of Democrats. Something to remember next time the Republicans claim to be pro-children or pro-children.

life. Next up are my interviews with Brian Schatz and David Hogg. No lie is brought to you by Zbiotics pre-alcohol. If politics didn't already make me feel old enough, there is also the fact that when I drink, I do not bounce back the next day like I used to until I found pre-alcohol. So here's the deal. Zbiotics, pre-alcohol probiotic drink is the world's first genetically engineered probiotic. It was invented by Ph.D. scientists to tackle rough mornings after drinking.

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Remember to head to zbiotics.com slash BTC and use the code BTC at checkout for 15% off. Now we've got the U.S. Senator from Hawaii, Brian Schatz. Thanks so much for coming back on. Thanks for having me, Brian. So after a lot of uncertainty, I think, initial uncertainty about Donald Trump's nominees, it does seem like the Republican caucus more broadly has more of a sense of falling in line right now. So I'm curious from your vantage in the Senate, does it seem like the Republicans no longer

have an appetite to be pushing back against Trump in the way that it seemed to, at least in the immediate aftermath of Matt Gates's nomination, not looking like it was going to succeed? But now we still have people like RFK Jr., Tulsi Gabbard. So what is the sense among your Republican colleagues in terms of whether they're willing to push back against Trump's more extreme nominees? I think they would like to prevent some of the more extreme nominees from being confirmed. And I think they're trying to figure out, you know, sort of what the market will bear in their own, you know, MAGA world, right? I think they have made the judgment that they can vote against one, maybe two of Trump's nominees. but if it starts to get to three or four or five,

then you're doing real political damage both to Trump and arguably the next time you have to survive a primary in a red state. So I think they're being somewhat clever about this. Obviously, Gates is gone and the DEA guy is gone. And the others are not even actually submitted formally to the Senate. So I think the Democrats' position right now

ought to be not to comment on most of these nominees until they are formally submitted to the Senate because the focus has to be on do the Republicans even have unanimity on their own nominees? How are you thinking about this in terms of where Democrats should expend their political capital? Because obviously, we're in the minority everywhere. And Democrats also have a tendency to make everything into a five alarm fire, which in turn kind of makes nothing feel like a five alarm fire very much, you know, not boy who cried wolf, because a lot of these things are serious and deserving of attention, but it has the result of feeling like nothing

is as extreme as it should feel. So how do you kind of move into this process, how does the party more broadly move into this process, knowing that you only have limited political capital to spend? Yeah, I think that's exactly the right way to look at it, which is that we do have to pick our spots. But, you know, I think some of these, some of the things that Trump is going to do, you know, events are going to overtake us. And it's unlikely that we're going to be as, you know, capable of showing judiciousness. Once Trump is fully underway and doing executive orders and nominating crazy people, you know, it's going to be on. But I do agree that even for the public on the left, there was a sense that if everything is an emergency, then maybe

nothing is an emergency. So we have to pick the ones that I think resonate with people. And to your point, look, there's a lot of work that I do in the United States Senate that is absolutely essential for Hawaii, for America, for democracy, and yet I may not emphasize it in my communications because it's kind of like infrastructure work for democracy itself. And generally speaking, most people are like, okay, I'm glad you're taking care of that, but that's not my main thing. And so when I think about what to fight about and whom to fight about, we have to fight for

people on behalf of people and not for institutions and on behalf of institutions. There's a general sense that Democrats want to fight for institutions because they are already in charge of those institutions. So then it becomes more about protecting your prerogatives to be at the, you know, at the helm of something as opposed to, hey, look, people are going to get hurt here. Well, I'm curious how that informs your messaging moving forward because I do think, and I absolutely include myself in this, that Democrats were. broadly focused on protecting norms, institutions, democracy heading into 2024. And I think what a lot of us didn't consider, myself, of course, included in this, is that for a lot of

people, those very institutions aren't working for them. I mean, a lot of people are very unhappy in this country. They're unhappy with the housing situation, with their financial situation, their own economic situation. And so when they see Democrats fighting for institutions that they believe largely abandoned them somewhere along the line, that actually exacerbates the distance between the Democratic Party and the people that we're trying to reach. So how are you looking toward fixing insofar as you can the messaging moving forward, you know, as we obviously try to claw back some semblance of a majority moving forward to 26 and 28?

I think what they're going to do on taxes gives us a real opportunity for strategic and political and moral clarity because it really is going to be a smash and grab. It really is going to be taking a bunch of money. from working people through tariffs and other taxes and transferring it to a bunch of billionaires that are populating the cabinet. And I think that is something that can unite like sort of the leftist to the centrist

in our coalition. And so I think that's one rallying point. But again, I just think we need to focus on what people are actually going through and describe the harm in those terms, not the harm to the Department of Defense, not the harm to the Constitution, not the harm to the norms of the United States Senate, but like how is somebody going to pay more or get screwed in some significant way?

And there's going to be plenty of evidence for that, but it requires us. And, you know, there's a thing that happened. I got to the Senate, you know, 12, 13 years ago. And, you know, there's a thing that happens when you get to the Congress, but particularly to the Senate, where I think even your communications shop thinks you're supposed to sound like an 1894 wig, you know, and just sort of like clearing your throat for the first three minutes and using a bunch of jargon. And so it's not just about what we focus on, but it's about what we don't do anymore. And it should not take us a couple of minutes to

clear our throats. We should not find a provocative or complicated way to say something that is super simple. You know, I'm watching this question of drones happen. And like Trump, is saying what like regular people are saying, which is like, well, if they know, why don't they tell us? 100%. And so I just think we have to talk like normal humans. And it's a little bit challenging when you've got a bunch of people who have like achieved a pretty important job, not talking like the rest of folks.

Yeah. Well, okay. So you said a lot in there that I want to jump in on. But the first was that this is going to be a cash and grab for a bunch of billionaires out there. But a lot of these billionaires we've seen have kind of fallen over themselves to align themselves with Trump. I mean, obviously, Elon Musk has turned Twitter into a right-wing megaphone. You have someone like Jeff Bezos, who again fell over himself to give a million

dollars to Trump's inauguration fund, Mark Zuckerberg, did the same. ABC News took what, you know, this is just my opinion, what could have been a very winnable defamation case and turned it into a $15 million settlement that would go to Donald Trump's, you know, foundation or something like that. But in any case, a lot of these billionaires that will benefit from Trump's presidency are also the very people that are going to be in charge of the media itself. And so how do you contend with that barrier when, yes, it's going to benefit billionaires, but those billionaires are the ones that are going to be largely responsible for delivering news to people and delivering that messaging to people?

And they're obviously not going to do it in a way that kind of is insulting to their own interests. Yeah, I mean, I think we want to make sure not to, I mean, look, I saw what happened over the last couple of weeks and it was very disappointing and alarming. So I don't want to diminish the importance of that. But on the other hand, you know, Ben, but don't break, right? I mean, it's not as though the Washington Post's reporting, that there's any evidence that the Washington Post's reporting, for instance, or NBC's reporting is being manipulated by its billionaire owners.

Now, we need to be vigilant about that. And I think the lesson that I have taken from all of this is like, billionaires are not going to save us. There's not like, oh, a bunch of good billionaires are going to come in and fight the bad billionaires. Like, their interests do not align with regular people, and that's the problem, right? And so we have to be the party to the extent that the Republicans have become a party that is against institutions. Now we have these incredibly powerful people who oversee international corporations who have cozyed up to Donald Trump.

And I think it's very important for that to be clarifying, right? During Black Lives Matter, during all the climate negotiations, during January 6, all these corporations, all these corporations, because they're front-facing with consumers, sort of nominally were on the right side of history. But I think what we realized is something that, you know, Secretary Pete said, I think, on a talk show, which is like, hey, rich people are going to do rich people things, right? And that's, and they can have a veneer of being like pro-climate or pro-choice

or pro-innovation. But in the end, they want super low tax rates and they want very little in the way of regulation. And if they can get some subsidies and some contracts along the way, that's exactly what they're going to do. So we just have to have real clarity. They are not the ones that are going to save us. I'm curious what your thoughts are in terms of our language, right? We speak in a way that's safe, inoffensive, uncontroversial.

And I think that's, in large part, owed to the fact that this is the Big Ten party. This is the party that focuses on people who are marginalized or largely left behind. And so that informs, in large part, how we speak to folks because, you know, you don't want to say this. the same things that certain folks on the right can say, and they don't have to worry about blowback because that's a, well, at least before this election, a largely homogenous group of people. So how do you kind of square those two things, where you want to have language that sounds human, that appeals to regular people, but at the same time, when you make sure that you appeal to so many people within such a broad tent, so, like such a large swath of people out there,

you have to do it in a way that I think isn't going to offend anyone. So have you thought about that as like the Democratic Party's predicament more broadly? Maybe. I mean, I guess I, first of all, I'm not sure that it's like impossible to find a way to sound normal without offending someone. Like we can sound normal. We can sound like a regular person and still not like offend part of our coalition. There's a way to be kind. There's a way to appreciate diversity without sounding like you just got, you know, spit out of

faculty lounge and you've like learned a bunch of, or you're 19 and you're learning a bunch of new language about the world and you're like road testing it. So I'm not sure I accept the premise that like it's some super high degree of difficulty thing to like talk normally. I just think if we started to talk normally, that would do like 80% of it. But there's another part of this, Brian, you might be, I think, underestimating, which is it's also just pollsters, right? And this is, I don't, I want to be very clear. Polsters didn't ask for this like, apex position in democratic strategy, but they now have it. You know, I've seen this in the climate space. I've seen this in civil rights space. They will test a particular proposition like three or

four different ways. Like here's the way, here's the most, here's the way to say it that polls the best, right? And often that is the way to say it that offends the least people because you get somebody who maybe isn't actually sympathetic to your point of view, but if you say it in a certain way it may be hidden enough that they go like, yeah, I'm fine with that. So the thing pulls at 71, you know, 29 rather than 65, 35, whatever the heck it is, right? And I think the problem with that is that given that one of our most basic problems is that we don't penetrate into whole universes of people, because we're not saying things that are interesting. If you have a captive audience and you ask 100 people, 70 out of 100 are going to go, like, yeah, that's the

least offensive way to phrase that. But one of the, I think, um, talents that Donald Trump has is to say things in maybe ways that are a little offensive, but they are interesting enough that they penetrate. Now, I don't think we should go out of our way to say things wacky, but I do think we need to calibrate this question of like, oh, this polls at 65, not 62 to, okay, but does the 65 five one sound like a person or do you sound like you're like a i spitting out a recommendation and i think a lot of times we sound like we are actually trying to dodge angry people and um and i think we just have to get a little more comfortable um you know just saying what we think and i i just remember when trump um tried to institute the muslim ban we had a bunch of pollsters come to us

and say, hey, you might want to be careful about this because it's actually polling, you know, relatively strongly. And Booker and Murphy and a number of others and I basically told these people to fuck off and we fought the Muslim ban. And you know what happened is the numbers moved because people want to hear the argument. And lacking an argument, sure, people are going to agree

with whatever is sort of not all of them, but people are going to agree with whatever's presented to them. And I think that's one of the lessons here is that we, it's important to get public opinion data, but our job is to move public opinion, not just to follow it. Right. And I feel like for so long it feels like Washington, like lags behind everybody else and are the last people to jump on board. Also, to your point, I think that eventually when you defer to the 65, to the 71 approval versus 65, and you chip away at the authenticity of your own message enough,

eventually that filters down to make it more of a brand problem because then you've done so many messages that were poll tested to be palatable for the most amount of people. And that becomes like the sense of what democratic messaging is. It's always just a little bit more chipped away at to sound a little bit more safe and unoffensive and uncontroversial to the broadest swath of people. And it starts to lose its humanity more broadly.

And so, like, we clearly have a brand problem within the Democratic Party that I think could benefit from some sense of authenticity or relatability in the messaging itself. And just plain speaking, right? Like, I don't want to, like, increase my degree of difficulty, like, so much that it's like, you know, because there's a little bit of like, what do we mean by authenticity? I don't think people need to know your personal life story. I just think you need to sound like a person. That's all. And I just want to make a very kind of narrow point. It's not Latinx, right?

like the retort the the latin x thing became this thing people fought over right and about um it's not latin x it's um center the needs of it's um it's norms it's institutions it's um it's even you know the kamala's sort of closing message on the economy was like opportunity economy yeah i don't know what the hell that is like i'm sure it it i'm sure it hit the right note rich right which was the left liked it because it sounds fair and good, but also entrepreneurs liked it because they like opportunity. And so we settled on it, but the problem is it doesn't sound like something a regular person would say. So I think the first question always is, is the thing we're saying something you could imagine,

someone you went to high school with actually saying out of their mouth, right? And I just, and again, like I think the Kamala campaign did an extraordinary job under difficult circumstances. and she was an amazing candidate, but I remember just hearing that they're going to center the needs of the middle class. And I was like, I don't know anyone outside of politics who says center, right? Center is not a verb. And it's a small thing, but it's not a small thing. Because when you're trying to show people that you live the life that they live,

or at least that you find it relatable, people know, people know where I work, right? and people know that there's like fancy sculptures and that I got to wear a suit. So they don't expect me to like, you know, to be an auto mechanic. But they want me to be able to interact with an auto mechanic in a way where it's not like I'm all confused. The test I use is whether or not my sister would understand because my sister got her degree in exercise science. She deals with athletes, spends most of her time in the gym. And so if I'm really like trying to figure out even something so simple as, okay, does a normal person know what GOP means, and I'll ask her and she has no idea, then I'll know that

when I'm talking about stuff so that I can better relate to regular people, don't use certain words. And I think that if I asked my sister what, you know, what the care economy was or whether she was, you know, what it means to center the needs of someone, she probably wouldn't know, you know what I mean? So I think, I think like kind of taking ourselves out of the, like, D.C. brain and putting ourselves in the shoes of people who don't listen to this stuff on a regular basis is going to be obviously much more helpful. And to that point, then, what's the deal with the rest of the Republican conference? Like, what do your colleagues think of this? Is there some sense that our messaging needs to change? Is there some sense that

there has to be kind of like an overhaul? What's happening, I guess, behind the scenes within the Democratic Party? I think the Democrat, I mean, look, I can't speak for the entire, like Democratic Party, I can speak for my Senate colleagues. We know it went poorly and we know we need to make some fundamental shifts. I do think it's language and choice of words. I also think there's, and I'm sure Brian, you're thinking about this pretty deeply. We also have like a ecosystem problem. They have a full on right wing noise machine. And we just simply don't to the extent that like progressive philanthropy and big donors have invested in journalism. It has mostly been, you know, straight down the middle journalism, which is very important,

like ProPublica and all that stuff. And they provide an enormous public service. But there's nothing comparable to the kind of propaganda ecosystem that's been established on the right. And I think some people are thinking about how to fix that. I'm a little less interested in the kind of left-right calibration post-election because it's just not obvious to me that we were either too far to the left or too far to the right. Look, we, you know, we lost Florida by a lot.

and reproductive choice, I mean, didn't hit the 60% threshold that it needed, but it still did very, very well, same Arizona. So there are a lot of places that are voting for progressive policies and the things that we thought were going to be our ticket to electoral success, but just weren't. And so I just think we need to, here's the opportunity, right, to the extent that it was sort of an article of faith that communities of color were already always going to go decisively for Democrats, right? then that kind of got blown up in the last election cycle. To the extent that young people were considered a reliable democratic constituency and that got blown up, it's certainly

worthy of alarm. It's really worthy of alarm. But it also shows that a lot of these coalitions are maybe not as damn fixed as we think, right? And that most of the people in rural communities that didn't vote for Democrats, never heard from Democrats, like not at all, did not hear from Democrats. And so we have to start communicating with folks. And the one thing I'll add to is that because we're earnest, because we want to solve problems, and all of those are the reasons that you should put us in charge of things in the government. But it's also a little bit of a hindrance when it comes to winning over folks, because let me tell you, it's culture, not policy. It's how we talk. It's how we come off. It's a vibe thing. And sure, if we had policy that we were affirmatively offensive to rural people, that would not help. And I don't want to harm anyone anyway. But it's not like if we just pass a farm bill, right? Or, for instance, if we do a big pension fund bailout, then the teamsters are going to end up voting for us. Like one of the things that we have learned is even as we deliver in red communities,

they keep slipping away from us. And so it's not like we can totally just policy our way out of this. We have to figure out what it is about us that is pissing them off. And some of that is this idea that politics is really downstream from culture and that we have to meet people where they are, talk to even the thing I just said meet people where they are. Nobody knows what the fuck that means. We have to talk like regular people and relate to people in normal ways.

Yeah, I think that that's all so well put. And I think it's a big relief to me, and I'm certain a lot of people watching and listening right now, to hear you putting your finger very correctly on the mark of all of these things and to know that we've got somebody like you in the Senate who understands this stuff to a degree that I think we're going to need to understand moving forward. So with that said, thank you for taking the time today. And happy holidays. Happy holidays. Thanks, Brian. Take care. I'm joined now by the co-founder of March for Our Lives, David Hogg. David, thanks so much for joining. Thanks so much for having me. So you have an announcement here. I wanted to give you the floor and let us know what you have to say. Yeah, after many conversations with people and being pushed by a number of my friends and allies,

I'm announcing my run for vice chair of the DMC, which is a role that, a decision I did not make lightly. This is not something you do because it's fun. Let me tell you. It's because it's necessary. Like all things in life, the most important. important things to do are rarely the easiest. And I'm somebody who has not always been very, let's say, consistently publicly supportive

of every decision that the Democratic Party has made. But I'm not here just to criticize it. I want to build something better. And I want to live in a reality where we acknowledge the fact that we actually lost, right? The most frustrating thing to me, to be honest with you. And I want to apologize for sounding angry in this. it's because I am, I am angry. We raised $2 billion, much of it coming from small dollar donors.

And the general sense, and this is not directed towards any one person, it's a broader cultural problem I think we have within the party. General sense that I've gotten after the election is, well, guys, you know, we might have said that Donald Trump is a huge threat to democracy, that he's a fascist and other things like that. And that was obviously what, you know, the general vibe was before the election. but it's okay. We tried our best. And the reality is, you don't say that. You don't have that mentality, right? We choose to consistently live in our own safe little bubble and in a comfortable reality instead of an uncomfortable one where we could actually win. And instead of actively choosing, just to listen to people, the reason we lost this election, it was ours to win. The reason why we lost is because we did not listen. And in fact, we paid consultants to not only help us, you know, not only did we put our fingers on our ears and say, la, la, la, la, I don't, I, you your inflation is not that bad.

Rent's going up is not that bad. Crime is not that bad because look at these charts, look at these stats. Instead, what we did is we paid consultants to push our fingers so far into our heads that it tickled our brains who drowned out things. And what we need to do as a party is actively choose to live in an uncomfortable reality

to listen to the people who don't agree with us at times, especially within the party, and have an open conversation. It's not to say that we can make everybody happy. Let's have no, you know, I have no delusions about that. But the reality is we have to listen to those that are raising serious concerns about key constituencies. During the DNC, I was on the National Finance Committee as one of the youngest people for the Harris campaign on the National Finance Committee.

And in that room at the Chicago Art Museum that we were at, I raised the question of what are we doing about young men. And the amount of vitriol that I heard back of saying, why would you ask that question that's such a dumb thing to be focused on? we don't need to focus on that, is emblematic of the broader problem at hand. And that I understand as a party there is a taboo around talking about young men, because oftentimes that has been to the exclusion of women, obviously. But the reality is we need to have a more nuanced view of it and understanding that empathy is not a zero-sum game. And if we can isolate young men, it is actually going to be worse for everybody,

including women. The other thing, too, is that when I raised concerns over a year before election day about young voters. I heard from those same consultants that we pay to, you know, stuff our fingers in our ears even further, that younger voters were not something we needed to worry about, that I was dumb for even thinking about this, and that everything was going to be fine. And then, unfortunately, I was proven correct with the election. And I hope that other constituencies were going to make up for it. And that would help bring us across the finish line, and that just didn't end up being the case, in part because our answer to voters was not

to listen to their feelings. It was to tell. them how to feel. Well, David, there's obviously, I think like the elephant in the room in terms of democratic leadership is that this party is largely a gerontocracy. I mean, we have, we have for a party that claims the majority of support, not enough, but the majority of support among young people, the fact that we have such an old leadership class, I think, is is a major cause for a concern here. And probably the reason why there is so little ability to relate to the issues plaguing regular people, whether it's housing costs, whether it's just regular cost of living. So how do you plan on navigating what is going to be an environment that's hostile to young people?

You're in your mid-20s. So how do you plan to navigate this environment that is inherently hostile to young people that's shown it's hostile to young people in light of your run for vice chair of the DNC? I mean, to be honest with you, it's not easy. This is one of the, this is one of the toughest things that I've done because you're not you know it's one thing to be questioned and criticized by uh republicans it's another thing to be questioned by the people that that are on your side uh right i know why i'm in this i did not choose to be involved in in democratic politics um i was forced into it because of the the fact that

we don't have a choice of whether or not to make our kids safe in our schools and why the reason why i'm doing this is because i know that if i don't do this there there is no other there are few other people of my age that actually could that can have the voice that can raise the money that can get into those rooms and can speak out and I need to make sure that I'm working and open that door and keeping it open for other young people into the future and with that too realizing that I'm the underdog in this race you know but I'm not going to try to contort myself and say well you know I'm going to twist myself in all these different ways to try to earn your boat and all these other things and the reality is we need some serious changes and I think anybody that can't see that is part of

the problem. And I understand that may cost me votes, but I would much rather tell people what I am actually feeling than feed them bullshit talking points over and over and over again. That are part of the reason why we've got here. I'm not scripted. Sometimes that's a disadvantage, but the reality is at least you know what I am feeling and you know I'm in it. It's because of what we saw yesterday in Wisconsin. It's because of what we see every day in our country. In my own, where I live, right? I know the stats. I know that gun violence has come down. I know that it's gone down by over 10% in the past four years. But the reality is, in my own neighborhood,

there have been, in the past six months, two drive-by shootings that happened, right? And carjacking's that have happened, and cars being dropped off after they were car-jacked. I know the stats, but I know that the answer to somebody to my neighbor is not to say, no, you don't understand. That drive-by shooting that woke up, you know, your partner at 2 in the morning the other night wasn't that bad

because crimes actually down 10%. What we need to do is bring people in that are working outside of the beltway. I'm traveling constantly with the work I'm doing with leaders we deserve to elect more young people, knocking doors, not in blue states, not just in blue states, not just in purple states, but in states as red as Alabama, where our first race was, where I was knocking doors in Birmingham, Alabama, right? Not easy conversations to have, but those are the conversations we need to, because we can either choose to continue to live as increasingly the party of the consulting class or become the party of the working class by actually listening to people.

not to say that I'm perfect or that, you know, I, frankly, that I know every single thing and how to fix it perfectly, I'd be lying to you if I said that I did. But the reality is, I know how to listen. And I think that's half the battle right now. I think that's such an important point that you made about basically pointing to statistics as some type of a substitute for people's lived experiences and saying, well, okay, there is, there is no problem with crime because it's down 10%. It's like, well, that's not going to change the fact that what I'm seeing with my own eyes, when I see a carjacking, for example, it shows me that there is. But I think there is an over-reliance in the Democratic Party on saying, look, things are fine. And I'm guilty of it, too,

by pointing to these macroeconomic figures. And OK, CPI is within the target 3% range, as if that makes it easier for anybody to be able to afford something at the grocery store that they simply can't afford. And I think that does exacerbate the gap. in terms of how regular people and the Democratic Party and politicians and even folks like me and the media are able to connect with each other. And that is the disconnect right there. I view your age and your lived experience as a strength. Do you, by virtue of the fact that you're not completely swallowed up subsumed by the Democratic

Party machine or Beltway media, I view it as a strength. Do you think that in this race, your age and your age and your. your lived experience are going to be viewed as a strength versus a liability? And if not, how do you convince people that it will be, that it should be? You know, I think part of it is people need to speak out publicly. The delegates need to see that the general, the Democratic electorate supports me, right? There are 448 members of the DNC that can vote on this position for D&C vice chair. And I need people to speak out publicly about supporting me in this mission, supporting me in this role.

it's not this disruption is not going to come from the inside a lot of the time what we need to do too is make sure that um yeah i want to go back to the question that you asked that you said earlier too about like how we're a gerentocracy i think to some extent that is certainly true obviously you know i have eyes um and i've been in these rooms and i'm often the youngest person in there by a decade plus um i do think that we need experience though you know i i think that we can and it's possible for me both to be critical of the party but also give, you know, give credit where credit is to do. I think the D&C was one of the best, you know, events that I have ever been to.

But the reality is our job isn't just to throw an amazing party. Our job is to win as a party, right? Our job is not to tell voters how to feel. It is to listen to voters about how they feel and meet them where they're at. And I think my age in this case in particular, in some ways it's an advantage because I don't need to contort myself. And I have not put myself in a box to say, well, you know, I really want to get this consultant. job so I'm going to contort myself so I can go and work for, you know, this presidential campaign or this congressional race or that. I don't care about that. I care about winning. I care

about making a difference and making sure that people like me in the future don't have to exist because school shootings and gun violence don't happen. And the bigger thing is too, I know right now our party is not in the place that it needs to be on guns. We have made progress. We have. I have to acknowledge that, right? We passed the first gun law in 30 years and it's potentially saved over a thousand lines with a number of people that have been prevented from buying guns like the AR-15 since the passage of the Safer Communities Act and the billions of dollars that we put into community safety and violence intervention programs. But the reality at the same time is I know for a fact, if we had 60 votes in the Senate as Democrats, Democratic leadership, not our electorate, to be clear,

not the general consensus shift on the party, but the leadership of the Democratic Party is going to say, well, we actually can't ban assault weapons because we need to be worrying about these 10 other seats. We need to do all this other stuff. Instead of going in the philosophy of Governor Tim Walls that I totally agree with, which is that we do not, as a party, we should not be banking political capital just to save it. We are given the honor of serving by the American people to deliver for them to lower health care costs and not give them bullshit talking points to address the housing crisis in our blue states and cities in something other than a press release a lot of the time. We need to become the party of building. We need to become the party that

actually listens when people are telling us that they have these problems. Part of the reason why I'm running for this is because I've lived a lot of the failures of our system, unfortunately. And I am somebody that, even in my position, both my parents are public servants. My mom was a teacher, my dad was an FBI agent

and a Navy helicopter piloting veteran. After the DNC, I had to fly straight back home, not to go in campaign, but to help my dad transfer into hospice with my family. And that was one of the most painful things I ever had to do because I saw how the system lets down people that have served it the most time and time again. I saw how, you know, my dad, despite serving as a, he was also a teacher on top of all that, despite literally serving as a country, his entire life was even on his death

and still denied the benefits that he was entitled to because of his Parkinson's very likely being caused by his exposure to jet fuel and seeing how even with his health care, even with the hospice that we do pay for it, my dad's health care to have a person 12 hours a day in our home to help take care of him was over $19,000 a month. And having to make a spreadsheet of how long you can afford to keep a loved one alive and cared for in the way that they deserve to be is something that no Democrat, no Republican, no American should ever have to do. And we're in a crisis right now. We talk about a gerontocracy within the party. We need to talk about it in the country too. We're in a sandwich moment for our

economy and our country where we are in a incoming, the tide has receded and gone out to sea, but it's before the tsunami arrives right now with the massive explosion that we are going to have in elder care costs and increasingly child care costs that are going to cripple our country. if we do not build a Democratic Party that actually delivers in something other than its talking points because it actually has the courage to deliver and understand that we're not elected just to stay elected forever. We're elected to do the right thing and fight for people like my father, fight for people like my classmates and actually get something done on all the issues that are affecting us. I think what you said about we are not there to bank political capital for future

elections is so spot on. I mean, look, Democrats have lost their majority. And so all of that banked political capital gets you, gets you what at this point? Like, we're in a position where we're completely in the wilderness. And so every step that we didn't take to make sure that we have a living wage, every step that we didn't take to make sure that we have union legislation, to make sure that we have stronger health care, stronger reproductive rights, stronger gun safety, whatever it is, is just a lost opportunity because at the end of the day, it's all zeroed out anyway. And you either have power or you don't. And so what's the point of banking political capital for the future if you're not going to actually give

people reason to vote for you the next time because you didn't exercise that power when you had the opportunity. Exactly. But it's even more than that because we did deliver on a lot of great stuff. And that's part of what kills me. We did do good stuff, whether it was the most climate study in human history, right? The first gun law in 30 years, the creation of the Office of Gun Violence Prevention that survivors have been pushing for for years to create. And an office that was literally coordinating the federal state and local government's response to basically every mass shooting that they could going on the ground talking to survivors and getting them the support that they need, not from some obscure office in the DOJ or a different government

agency, but directly from the president of the United States so that when there was a shooting, for example, in Lewiston, Maine, they were on the ground there talking to them about, okay, there were a lot of people in this shooting that were deaf or hard of hearing. How do we get them ASL interpreters so that they can get the therapy and support that they need and deserve to build a government that actually delivers for the people, and it wasn't in a partisan way. They've worked across the aisle with Republicans, Democrats, and independents across Maine to help do that. But we need to be able to talk about what we are actually doing at the same time. We also need to simplify our policies.

I think that's one of the biggest obstacles that we have is we overcomplicate everything. We treat so much of our communication, like this is a graduate student seminar at Georgetown or something like that, when what we need to be treating it as is we're having a conversation with our neighbor about the fact that he's having to take care of his mom who's, you know, elderly and having to handle all the health care costs. You know what we say to them is, we don't want to have a system where you go bankrupt because you want your mom to have the best health care, period. It's not complicated. We want to have a system, in my opinion, where veterans are, the onus is not on our disabled veterans to prove to our government why they are disabled and how that service connected. The onus is on the very

government that set them to the war in the first place to actually talk about why their service is why their disability is not service-connected rather than the veteran that has already sacrificed so much because if we're willing to spend so much money going into bullshit wars like Iraq, for example, and doing that, we should at least take care of our veterans afterwards. And when I'm out there, when I saw the work that was being done on the Pact Act, that Republicans sunk at the last second, right? Just out of spite for veterans like my father and Democrats, when there are people, veterans that I am friends with,

that we're sleeping outside of the Capitol, pulling a firewash on the steps of the United States Senate until they passed that legislation, those are the real Americans that we need to be talking to and empowering in the party and listening to, right? Because we did deliver for them, but we need to communicate better that we did that in the first place.

David, talk to me about what people who are watching right now can do to help and also what the structure is of the DNC vice chair spot. If I'm not mistaken, there are five DNC vice chairs. Is that correct? Yeah. Okay. And so how many people are running right now?

And what's the best way for people who are watching and listening to be able to help you make your case? So I don't want to get into too many of the specifics of the election because I don't want people to just like turn this off. But basically, there's a gender balance. And it's very likely there's only going to be one seat available for a guy for vice chair right now. And the best way that people can support me, the election's coming up and just, just over a month or so from now. But the best way people can support me is tweeting out that they support me, talking about it, posting about it,

and tagging people that are delegates for the DNC. And the first ones that I can tell you about are your state party Democratic chairs and vice chairs as well. And also, you know, I'm still very new to this. And I've tried to do as much of the homework as I can. But the DNC is at times a bit of scaring a little hard to understand. But nonetheless, the best thing that I can have is that public support. out there from you all

because it really just comes down to those 400 some odd people and they need to know that the people that are not just the party insiders and other people but normal people support my run for this because I am the underdog the reality is like I said

because I am not scripted because I'm not trying to contort myself and not lie to people but just manipulate the truth that I'm saying to people about why I'm doing this but just being completely open with them about you know I think it would be a good

idea. If, God forbid, you know, we had a massive shift of 20 points to the right of 18 to 29 year olds. Hear me out. Maybe we should have somebody of that age demographic in the room. Yeah. Well, it's exactly the right point. And I think, you know, look, I think your passion is undeniable. And I think, and you hit on so many of the right points here in terms of what Democrats need to do, especially from a messaging perspective, being able to just communicate with people in a way that regular people can understand and appreciate, and that's something that we've lost thus far, and that we need to get back, and we need to get it back with a certain subset of the population that I think you can relate to a hell of a lot better than the vast

majority of people out there. So best of luck on the rest of your run here, and I'm sure we'll be talking before the elections actually happen. Thanks so much. Let's go win this thing. Thanks again, Senator Schatz and David Hogg. 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, and interviews edited for YouTube by Nicholas Nicotera. If you want to support the show, please subscribe on your preferred podcast app

and leave a five-star rating in a review. And as always, you can find me at Brian Tyler Cohen on all of my other channels, or you can go to bryentailercoen.com to learn more.