No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen - Republicans offer humiliating arguments against DC statehood

Episode Date: April 25, 2021

The House has passed a bill granting statehood for Washington, D.C., and Brian debunks all of the arguments AGAINST it. Brian interviews Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton from Washington, D.C. about statehood passing the House, getting the Democratic holdouts on board, and her response to those Republicans who’ve publicly opposed it. And finally, Brian chats with Fox LA host Elex Michaelson about the California recall and Caitlyn Jenner’s entrance into the race, and what Manchin and Sinema stand to gain by protecting the filibuster.Written by Brian Tyler CohenProduced by Sam GraberRecorded in Los Angeles, CAhttps://www.briantylercohen.com/podcast/See 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 statehood for Washington, D.C., along with how to debunk all of the arguments against it. I interview Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton from Washington, D.C., about statehood passing the House, getting the Democratic holdouts on board, and her response to those Republicans who've publicly opposed it. And finally, I chat with Fox L.A.'s Alex Michelson about the California recall and Caitlin Jenner's entrance into the race and what Mansion and Cinema stand to gain by protecting the filibuster. I'm Brian Tyler Cohen, and you're listening to No Lie. For the second time in U.S. history, the House has passed a bill granting statehood for Washington, D.C., which has prompted Republicans to line up against the 705,000 residents of D.C. getting representation in Congress. Now, there's a whole gamut of excuses being thrown out by Republicans, so I just want to cover what I can, ranging from the ridiculous to the more quietly insidious. So first off, Republicans have claimed that D.C. can't possibly be a state because there's no landfill.

A comment that prompted Congressman Mondair Jones to say this. One of my House Republican colleagues said that D.C. shouldn't be a state because the district doesn't have a landfill. My goodness, with all the racist trash my colleagues have brought to this debate, I can see why they're worried about having a place to put it. We've had Tom Cotton say that D.C. wasn't well-rounded enough to be a state, giving this example. Yes, Wyoming is smaller than Washington by population. But it has three times as many workers. in mining, logging, and construction, and ten times as many workers in manufacturing.

In other words, Wyoming is a well-rounded working-class state. Ah, so apparently D.C. can't be a state because there's no logging. I guess there's a certain threshold of ruggedness that needs to be reached to satisfy Tom Cotton's requirements for statehood.

Republicans have claimed that D.C. doesn't have enough people. There are more people living in Washington, D.C., than Vermont or Wyoming. And D.C. would be the second most popular a state at its time of admission only behind Utah, which came in with 1.6 million residents. And then we get into the ones that are a little less obvious to debunk, like the idea that the framers, the founders, didn't want D.C. to become a state. And so while it's easy to hide behind the framers in 2021 by pretending that we knew what their intentions were 250 years ago, we also

have the benefit of being able to just read the Constitution. Article 1 says that the seat of the government of the United States must not exceed 10 square miles. It doesn't say where the capital will be, nor how big it should be, just that it'll be the seat of government and can't exceed 10 square miles. In other words, Republicans are right that the founders did intend for the seat of government to remain a federal district, but that doesn't mean that the area around it that comprises the entirety of Washington, D.C. can't be, meaning everything other than the Capitol, the White House, the Supreme Court, and most federal buildings. That's all the seat of government is. So as far as the founders are concerned, statehood for Washington, D.C. is clearly

constitutional. And beyond that, if you're really going to throw around the framers, I'm not exactly sure how that reconciles with the whole concept of taxation without representation. Pretty sure the founders of all people had some pretty strong feelings about taxation without representation. If it wasn't literally for their opposition to taxation without representation, we'd all be speaking English right now. English with an English accent. What I mean is that we'd be spelling color with a you. And one more note on the framers. Our entire system is built to allow for change. The Constitution allows for amendments and has them. We have a mechanism to add states, and we have. The framers clearly knew the Constitution would be a living, breathing document, that the country would grow and evolve,

and the language in the Constitution bears that out. But finally, here's the argument that we're hearing most, that D.C. statehood is a democratic power grab. As if history started today, as if we're not sitting in a country composed of states that were added for the express purpose of bolstering Republicans' numbers in the Senate. Heather Cox wrote a piece in the Atlantic and explained that in 1889 and 1890, Congress added North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Washington, Idaho, and Wyoming, the largest admission of states since the original 13. This addition of 12 new senators and 18 new electors to the Electoral College was a deliberate strategy of late 19th century Republicans to stay in power after their swing

toward big business cost them a popular majority. This strategy paid dividends deep into the future. Indeed, the admission of so many rural states back then helps to explain GOP control of the Senate today, 130 years later, end quote. And we've also obviously been hearing a lot about the Dakotas being split into two states for the express purpose of squeezing four senators out instead of two.

And it turns out that those political implications were taken into account. One of the top supporters of two Dakotas in the late 1800s was a Republican senator from Indiana who would later become the 20, third president, Benjamin Harrison, as if the benefits of adding two Republican states instead of one escaped him. There's a book called History of North Dakota. It's written by University of North Dakota History Professor Elwyn Robinson. And there's a couple paragraphs that I want to read.

This is more than I usually read aloud, but they really do sum up the whole situation perfectly. This is after North and South Dakota were admitted as two separate states. Quote, President Harrison's son crowed that the Republicans would win all the new states and gain eight more senators, while the state's new electors meant that Cleveland's New York would no longer dominate the electoral college. When the Republicans' popularity continued to fall nationally, in 1890, Congress added Wyoming and Idaho, whose populations in 1880 were fewer than 21,000 and 33,000 respectively, organizing them so quickly that they bypass normal procedures and permitted volunteers instead of elected delegates to write Idaho's constitution. Democrats objected

that Wyoming and Idaho would have four senators and two representatives, even though there were fewer people in both together than in some of Massachusetts' congressional districts, but Harrison's men insisted that they were statesmen rather than partisans. They accused Democrats of refusing to admit any state that did not support their party, a reversal of the actual record, and claims Republicans supported the prosperous and growing communities of the Great West. But moderate Republicans sided with the Democrats, pointing out that the Harrison administration had badly undercut the political power of voters from populist regions, attacking America's fundamental principle of equal representation. Harrison,

since men didn't care. Quote, the difference between the parties is as different between light and darkness day and night, quote, one supporter argued. The Republican Party, he insisted, must stay in power to protect big business if that meant shutting more populous territories out of statehood and admitting a few underpopulated Western states to enable a minority to exercise political control over the majority of Americans. So be it. And again, that was from the book History of North Dakota by Elwyn Robinson. But in other words, the Republicans' argument in 1890 was that Democrats didn't want to admit states that didn't support their party and that it was them who supported growing communities. And now the Republican Party today, the same party

still benefiting from the actions of conservatives more than 100 years ago, they're turning around and denying representation to people for the exact reason that they grandstanded about in the past. And look, that's obviously not to say that both parties don't support and oppose whatever's good or bad for them at the time, or that they're not always going to look hypocritical at one point or another, but the simple fact is that, historically speaking, Republicans actually made the argument for statehood already, and they continue to benefit from it to this very day. Admitting D.C. isn't only constitutional. It's not only reasonable in terms of population size, but the GOP is on record extolling the virtues of supporting growing communities.

Not that Republicans have ever been swayed by their own words in the past, but if they're going to make those arguments, we should at least be able to reflect back to them their own stance on it. And none of this, by the way, none of this is to say that D.C. statehood wouldn't benefit Democrats because clearly it would. But for Republicans to be the ones pointing to that is either historical ignorance or shameless hypocrisy or some combination of the two. The fact is that Republicans have benefited from a system for over a hundred years where they're able to wield outsized power despite the fact that Senate Republicans represent 41 million fewer Americans than Senate Democrats. The inherent advantage that Republicans enjoy couldn't be more obvious. But at the end of the day, you can't justify denying over 700,000 Americans in Washington, D.C., their right to representation. That the Democrats would benefit from it doesn't erase the injustice that those Americans are facing right now.

Still coming up, we have my chat with Fox L.A.'s. Alex Michelson about Caitlin Jenner jumping into the California recall election race and how Mansion and Cinema stand again by protecting the filibuster. But first, here's my interview with the Congresswoman from Washington, D.C. herself, Eleanor Holmes Norton. Today we've got the Congresswoman representing Washington, D.C., delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton. Thanks so much for coming on. My pleasure. So first of all, the House has passed the bill for D.C. statehood, so congratulations. Now, obviously, the fight is, you know, far from over.

And clearly, this is an issue that's especially important to you. So when someone asks why D.C. should be a state, what have you found of the most persuasive arguments? Probably the most persuasive argument. In fact, the argument that gets us some Republicans is that district residents pay the highest taxes per capita in the United States and still don't have the same rights as others have. That's what statehood would give us. Yeah, I actually, that was one of the only arguments that I hadn't heard. So it's really, it's really interesting that you would say that. Now, D.C. statehood has been your issue forever. And it's actually passing. the House before. But is this time different and why? Well, this is different. It's different

because we have a Democratic House, a Democratic Senate, and a Democratic president, all of whom support D.C. statehood. This is different for another reason. The Senate was late organizing or held up organizing over the filibuster. And indeed, Democrats got the Senate because Republicans would move no bills without the filibuster, or at least no significant bills. So they gave that House to the Democrats. So it's not for D.C. statehood, frankly. But if the filibuster goes for everything else, it will have to go for D.C. statehood as well.

So I am very, very hopeful about our D.C. statehood bill. Well, that's a good segue into my next question. question, which is the obstacles that we're going to face in the Senate. So I'm not under any illusions that this thing is going to pass with 60 votes. And so speaking of the filibuster, even if we are able to reform the filibuster, there are still a few Democratic holdouts who haven't weighed in yet. And that includes Mansion, Cinema, Kelly, Shaheen, and King. This issue is your baby. You know, have you specifically lobbied or spoken to any of these people? we're working on look we have got more than 90% of the Democrats we really do not believe that if we get close to statehood that we won't get the remaining Democrats in fact I think the Senate is going to become even more Democratic in the next two years yeah especially we have we have states like Pennsylvania coming up Wisconsin coming up North Carolina all of these states are are right for

the taking. So, you know, from your lips to God's ears. Now, Congresswoman Nancy Mace came out the other day and said, and said this. We're seeing it now with D.C. statehood. D.C. wouldn't even qualify as a singular congressional district, and here they are. They want the power and the authority of being an entire state in the United States. And they want that power. What's your response to that? Her response is that she ought to go back to school. The district is larger than two states that already have statehood. So the qualifications of the district for statehood are not in doubt. All that is in doubt of the politics of the matter.

Why do you think Representative Liz Cheney, who's standing right behind her, didn't manage to say anything? I think it had something to do with the fact that her entire state of Wyoming that she represents has 150,000 fewer people than D.C. Think that might have played a role? Look, because she's a Republican, that's a short answer. Wyoming and Vermont are the two states that are below us and the number of residents. Mitt Romney weighed in two.

He suggested that D.C. retroceived into Maryland as a compromise. What would be your response to that one? There would be two responses. One is that Maryland gave the land to D.C. in perpetuity. That's the first response. It didn't just say, look. and we'll take it back when we get ready. Right.

And the other response is that both senators and all of the Democratic members from Maryland support D.C. statehood, the only member from Maryland that doesn't support D.C. statehood is the lone Republican from Maryland. Right. I think it's ironic, too, to see, you know, there's a big states rights contingent on the right. And yet, when it comes to issues that, that, you know, national Republican issues. Suddenly you have senators from Texas deciding that they want to overturn the election results in Georgia and Michigan and Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Suddenly you have

the Republican senator from Utah deciding that that D.C. is going to retrocede into Maryland. It's funny how the state's rights party suddenly becomes a little less states rights when it comes to issues that benefit them. Yeah, they don't mind the big hand of the government when it comes to issues that they support. That's why they don't have any credibility. So one argument against statehood on the right is that D.C. wouldn't be able to sustain itself, that it would be the poorest state. Would D.C. be able to sustain itself? It certainly wouldn't be the poorest state. The district has so many people moving into the district. We don't have enough room for them all. The district is very prosperous at the moment.

The district had a hard time way back in the day, but this is certainly not the case today. So everyone is focused on D.C. over Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, for example. If we're successful with D.C., do we move on to other territories? Well, we'd love to partner with Puerto Rico. And Puerto Rico now has to decide whether it wants state or they have been divided on it. They have recent hearings there. If they decide, it'd be terrific to partner with them. I'm not sure that Puerto Rico would meet the old standard, one Democrat, one Republican.

Their delegate is a Republican, but if the people of Puerto Rico were to vote, I'm not sure how they would vote with respect to political party. One last question on this, and this strikes right to the heart of my OCD. What does a flag with 51 stars look like? Actually, there have been tests on that, and I think, frankly, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between the flag you have now. the star would be placed in such a way with only one additional star that you'd have to look very closely to find out you had a new state. We'd be able to find it, though. I think it's something that I'd have a hard time with, but I think I'd be able to overlook it if it meant that we can get statehood for D.C. So I do want to switch gears here to the

Derek Chauvin case. This past week, we saw Derek Chauvin get convicted of murder for the killing of George Floyd. So what does this mean moving forward? Does this mean, that Derek Chauvin was so blatantly guilty and the fact that there was video and entire countrywide protest that his conviction was a one-off? Or does this actually signal a sea change that could lead to actual systemic reform? Well, I fear it could be a one-off. The reason I fear it is because of the conviction of Chauvin almost could not be avoided. It was an eyewitness, eyewitness for the world to see. So unless you didn't see what you saw,

he had to be convicted. I'm not sure what that does for us when it comes to most of the convictions that will be outstanding in the future on police officers. If that's what it takes, that's more than we'll have. Perhaps again, although I must say social media

It does give us a new way to perhaps get the kind of evidence we couldn't get before. Yeah. But, you know, like you said, it is, you know, this was kind of a combination of every factor that really made it impossible not to convict him. I mean, you had entire worldwide protests about this, about this one case. I mean, honestly, if a conviction couldn't be found on this case, then that would have, you know. So while I know that this was one instance of accountability, there's clearly still a need for systemic change. I know negotiations are ongoing for the Justice and Policing Act. Do you have any update on the progress of that? Well, of course, the bill is held up on qualified immunity. And that, of course, means that it's difficult to convict a police officer. Of course, Dave Chauvin shows us maybe you can because the good faith defense has been outstanding,

the defense that the officer thought what he was engaged in was lawful. And there is compromise, not language, but the one black senator in the Senate is trying to compromise on this matter, I think the qualified immunity notion is very troubling. It makes it almost impossible to convict a police officer unless we have the Derek Chauvin matter before us. That's what we won't have most of the time. Right, right. This overwhelming avalanche of evidence against somebody that the entire world knows it's true. Well, is this issue of qualified immunity? Is this what Republicans are basically looking to take out? And is this a red line for Democrats?

Democrats are trying not to make it a red line because we want this bill so bad. That's why there are, as I speak, negotiations going on because we want the George Floyd act out. Right, totally. Well, good luck to you as you continue to fight for statehood and to the people of D.C. in their fight for representation. So, Congresswoman, thank you so much for taking the time to talk. I appreciate it. It's been my pleasure.

Okay, so last week I took some questions from people, and this week I want to try something different. I have my friend Alex Michelson here, who is the host of California's only statewide political show. The issue is I've also had him as a guest on this podcast. So we're just going to talk about a few things. So Alex, thanks for chatting with me. Thanks for the invite, Brian. So let's talk about an issue that I know that you're intimately familiar with, the California recall. Caitlin Jenner has jumped into the race now. So I guess the question is, is it going to work well brian you know often in politics we talk about lanes right there's the liberal lane the more conservative lane the more moderate lane traditionally there has not been a

trump-loving transgender activist lane in the uh california political scene so this is usually a bit of a niche uh you know one of the questions for kately jenner is what do you stand for um most in the transgender activist community, which has been her one issue, came out against her on the day that she came out to run, saying that she has not been active in their movement, especially in fighting a lot of these trans discriminatory laws

that they say had been passed by Republicans. Caitlin Jenner in the past was vocal about supporting President Trump, but a recent Politico investigation found that in most elections in her adult life. She hasn't voted, including in 2016. She didn't vote for Trump or Hillary or anybody. She just didn't vote. So on the, you know, the day of her announcement, she put up a website, which had ways to donate. It had lots of Caitlin Jenner merchandise on it, but it didn't

have a single policy position. And on the day of her launch, did not do a single interview with any California political reporter or anybody at all to do it with a tabloid or people magazine or anybody. So there's a lot of questions in terms of Caitlin Jenner, who she is, why she wants to do this. What's this really for? You know, and there's a lot of comparisons also, Brian, to Arnold Schwarzenegger, which I really don't think are fair. I want to dive into that for a second. First of all, you know, with regard to these comparisons, California is a different state now than it was 20 years ago, right, in 2003. We have less than a quarter of registered Republicans in California. I think it's 24% of Californians are registered Republicans. It's been 15 years since

Republicans held elected office statewide in California. And Arnold was taken seriously as a political figure, you know, and he had heavyweights advising him as opposed to who does Caitlin Jenner. She has like Trump a Trump aide's, right? Brad Pascal, the former Trump campaign manager is an informal advisor. And then, you know, when Schwarzenegger ran, he was running against someone in Gray Davis who had a 24% approval rating and a 65% disapproval rating versus Gavin Newsom's 56% approval rating, 40% disapproval. So Gavin, Gavin's up. He has a net 16 point approval rating versus, you know, what Gray Davis had 20 years ago. So, you know, right.

Plus, I mean, just even from a celebrity perspective, Arnold Schwarzenegger was one of the biggest stars in the world at the time. I mean, he was the A-A-A-list of A-listers married to, you know, a prominent Kennedy Democrat at the time. His image was being somebody who was strong and as an outsider, and he literally was Mr. Universe, right? Caitlin Jenner, as my colleague Carla Maranucci pointed out on my show yesterday, Carla from Politico, you know, was sort of best known for being on keeping up with the Kardashians where she struggled to keep up with the Kardashians. Chris Jenner was the boss on that show who got everything done. And at the time, and at the

time, Bruce Jenner was sort of on the couch, you know, giving side eye. So, you know, the, the, in terms of where she is, in terms of, you know, an actual political infrastructure, it's hard to imagine she's going to be able to pull that off. And as you mentioned, Gavin Newsom is in a position of relative strength right now. I mean, nobody wants to face a recall. And conditions on the ground could change. But if you look at where conditions on the ground are now and where trends seem to be going, it seems like Gavin Newsom should cruise to easily defeat the recall. The biggest threat to Gavin Newsom by far, which is why his team is working so over the top aggressively to try to stop it, would be for a Democrat to get on the ballot because every argument they use, they say

Republican recall, Republican recall. And if all of a sudden it's Democrats that are pushing it too, that basically cuts off their main argument. But if Gavin Newsom, in the most blue state in the country, can run as a Democrat versus Trump supporters on a state where Donald Trump lost by more than five million votes, that's a pretty good place for him to be. By the way, just from, you know, a news consumer's perspective, when I'm on YouTube, for example, I'm constantly, constantly seeing ads cut by everyone from Cory Booker to Elizabeth Warren promoting Gavin Newsom. So clearly he's, you know, been successful in getting every wing of the Democratic Party on board to support him and to do it quickly.

See, I don't get any of those ads on my YouTube. So maybe that says something about our viewing preferences. Yeah, that's right. So I do want to switch, switch gears here and talk about the filibuster for a moment. It's your favorite topic. You are obsessed. You're obsessed more than just about anybody else out there with this particular topic. It is the most important topic.

It's, you know, look, like we can talk about all of our policy positions until we're blue in the face. But they'll only be important until 2022 because if we're not able to pass the filibuster and Democrats are permanently legislated out of government, then it's not going to matter. It's not going to matter what our position on Medicare for all is or women's reproductive rights or climate change. It's not going to matter because we're going to be gerrymandered out of the house. I think now that you have had Chuck Schumer on. on this show and you guys are clearly buds.

It should be called the Brian Tyler Cohen, Justice in Filibuster Reform Act. I feel like it should be named after you. Rolls off the time. Rolls off the tongue. So do you think it's so Brian, do you think it's really going to happen though? You've now probed Chuck Schumer.

You've talked to these people. You are obsessed with this. But you still don't seem to have the votes yet. Well, look, it goes two ways. If we still haven't had assurances from. mansion and cinema with everything that's on the table. It's not as if they don't know what's at stake by virtue of protecting the filibuster, right? Like you even see these bills moving across the country, these voter suppression bills. We have, I believe, over 300 of them. And the fact that

we still haven't had definitive movement by the mansions and cinemas of the party eliminate or at least reform the filibuster in the face of that doesn't make me feel good. But at the same time, what I think they might be waiting for is for Republicans to actually come out and block some legislation. This way, it's not so much in the abstract. It's not so much everybody's saying, well, we have to eliminate the filibuster just as an abstract entity. It's okay, the filibuster is the only thing preventing us from moving forward on HR1. It's the only thing preventing us from moving forward on the Justice and Policing Act. It's the only thing preventing us from moving forward on the infrastructure bill. And so when you're able to,

to take it out of the abstract and actually show it practically speaking, I think maybe the argument will be easier for the mansions and cinemas of the Senate to make to their constituents and be able to actually point to Republicans actually blocking something and using the filibuster as a tool to block something as opposed to what it is now, which is really just a tool in the abstract. Well, I think that the biggest difference that we're seeing from a strategic perspective between this administration and the last administration is the fact that there is a strategic perspective from this administration, right? I mean, President Trump didn't really believe in long-term planning. He believed in, in the moment, how can I win the news cycle and change the

Kairons on Fox News? And that's not really where the Biden team comes from. You have these people that have been in government for 30, 40 years, who have done this so many times. And if you really listen to them and watch the way they go about things, there is a time and place. I mean, even listening to your interview last week, Brian, with Gina Raimundo, the Secretary of Commerce, you know, you were pushing her on this idea of, well, can't we just do it with Democrats? And she said, you know, maybe it'll come to a point where we need that. But right now, we're trying to work with Republicans.

So it is seem like the administration is trying to say, let's try this way first, and if that doesn't work, then there are receipts for the fact that you wouldn't support this, and now we're going to go about it the other way. That being said, I don't feel like Joe Manchin and Kristen Sinema think that it is advantageous for themselves politically to bend on this. I mean, Joe Manchin has not left really any daylight. I mean, every statement he makes is pretty clear on this. maybe they're not going to. And you watch what is happening in terms of legislation right now. Like I talked with Congresswoman Karen Bass this week about the Justice and Policing Act, the George Floyd Act, that she's trying to negotiate. And they are going about the process of trying to find 60 votes in the Senate and rewrite this legislation so they could present something that would pass because I don't think she believes that filibuster reform is happening anytime soon. and she feels that the only way to get this done is to try to find Republican votes.

So, you know, in terms of a legislative strategy, they're not certainly acting right now like they're about to get a 50 vote threshold. Right. In terms of what's advantageous for them specifically, which you touched on just a second ago, I do think that there's a difference between Mansion and Cinema, for example. You know, like Arizona is trending blue. Arizona itself, the legislature introduced a raft of voter suppression bills. Right, right, of course. But Arizona introduced all these voter suppression bills that would only serve to make it more difficult for Kirsten Sinema herself to get elected.

So she has to be able to see that and recognize that by virtue of her protecting the filibuster, she's only making it more difficult for her own re-election. But with that said, how do you reconcile this for someone like Manchin who, you know, on one hand, his own party's existence depends on it, right? And on the other hand, any deference to Democrats probably hurts him in West Virginia.

And this would be a pretty big display of deference to Democrats reforming the filibuster. I think that instead of giving Joe Manchin such a hard time, which is what Democrats do, you should be giving a harder time to, like, Cal Cunningham in North Carolina. Like, there are other seats that the Democrats should have won. Joe Manchin is a unicorn. He won a seat in the most Republican state in the entire country. country. And he figured out the secret sauce. Only he figured that out in order to do that. And because he won that, Chuck Schumer is the Senate Majority Leader. If he hadn't won that, Mitch McConnell

would be the Senate Majority Leader right now. And all of these discussions would be totally moot. I think that Democrats need to focus on winning states like Maine, where they have a much better chance to win and figure out why is it that Susan Collins won and we couldn't win in that state than then giving Joe Manchin such a hard time. Joe Manchin should be the plus one. He's the gravy. And I feel like he needs to be given some deference if you're a Democrat because he maybe knows that state better than you do. It's the only one that's been able to figure this out. But he, you know, the question is with Joe Manchin is you don't know how much longer does he want to continue to serve? We've seen senators serve until they're very old. We know that.

And in California, we're experiencing that now with a senator who doesn't do interviews because she's getting up there in age, I guess, in Diane Feinstein. But, you know, you don't know if he's going to continue to run. Kristen Sinema has a long pathway ahead of her. She's a much younger person and presumably has a longer career ahead of her and doesn't want to be out of a job real soon. Yeah, although the argument could be made that she's, uh, that her position is basically making it so that she will pull her stuff out of a job. Anyway, uh, that's a great point that you made about Mansion specifically. And it's a point that I've, I've harped on without, you know, beating it too hard because there are those who basically would say that, uh, that he is a

Republican. So, but he, but he, but he isn't. And, and remember things like, uh, I mean, just for your listeners, you know, things like committee assignments, uh, and who's chairing all these different committees. There's a big difference when Bernie Sanders is now chairing the committee. And that's there because Joe Manchin won. And it's only one person changing in terms of the Senate and all of that flips. So maybe some Democrats, although it's hard to say that, should be saying thank you to Joe Manchin and should be wondering why could some of these other seats not flip and not do what Joe Manchin did in states that are way, way more democratic than West Virginia, the state that Donald Trump won bigger than any other place in the whole country.

And we'll look toward Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and North Carolina and even, you know, Iowa and Ohio and obviously look to defend states like Arizona and Georgia in this upcoming 2022 midterm cycle. So with that said, Alex, thanks so much for coming to chat. It was fun. Thank you very much. And I can't wait to see the Brian Tyler Cohen, Justice and Philibuster Reform Bill. It's going to be a landmark moment. From your lips to Chuck Schumer's ears. Thanks, buddy. Thanks again to Alex. 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.