No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen - Trump gets rejected by Republicans. Twice.

Episode Date: August 1, 2021

Trump gets rebuked twice after trying to put his finger on the scales. Brian interviews Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) about his thoughts on a number of Republicans testifying for the January 6 committee, including Trump, Kevin McCarthy, and Jim Jordan; how to pass voting rights legislation despite Manchin’s opposition to the filibuster; and his introduction of the National Security Powers Act to finally put the power back in Congress’ hands to declare war. And West Virginia’s Richard Ojeda joins to talk about the best way to deal with his fellow West Virginian Joe Manchin, how Democrats can get elected in red districts and states, and his response – as an Army vet – to conservative pundits mocking law enforcement officials over January 6.Support Texas Democrats by donating here: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/texaswalkoutDonate 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 talk about Trump getting rebuked, not once but twice after trying to put his finger on the scales. I interview Senator Chris Murphy from Connecticut about his thoughts on a number of Republicans testifying for the January 6th Committee, including Trump, Kevin McCarthy, and Jim Jordan, had a past voting rights legislation despite Manchin's opposition to the filibuster in the Senate and his introduction of the National Security Powers Act to finally put the power back in Congress's hands to declare war. And West Virginia's Richard Ojeda joins to talk about the best way to deal with his fellow

West Virginia, Joe Manchin, how Democrats can get elected in red districts and states, and his response as an army vet to conservative pundits mocking law enforcement officials after January 6th. I'm Brian Tyler Cohen, and you're listening to No Lie. Now, I don't talk about Donald Trump much at all anymore, and that's very much on purpose, but I wanted to make an exception here, and that's because in two separate instances this past week, Trump inserted himself into the narrative, and both times got fully rebuked by Republicans. The first is that in a special election in Texas's sixth congressional district, an all-Republican race, voters elected state rep Jake Elsie over the Trump endorsed Susan Wright.

And that was after he held a teller rally for her, after he recorded robocalls for her, after his PAC secured a $100,000 TV ad buy. And, of course, Republicans are all falling over themselves now to convince everyone that Trump's star isn't fading, with even Trump himself coming out afterwards and saying, quote, I don't want to claim it's a loss, this is a win. The big thing is, we had two very good people running that were both Republicans. That was the win. In other words, when a Trump endorsement wins, it's a win. And when a Trump endorsement loses, it's a win, which is super convenient, I got to say. So what does this mean? It could mean a lot of things.

It could mean nothing, just a special election with low turnout in an all-Republican primary with two candidates who are probably close on all the issues. It could mean that voters are pushing back against Trump. Joe Barton, who'd held the Sixth District seat for over three decades before Ron Wright, whose death from COVID triggered the special election, said that Trump, quote, should not have gotten involved in this race, it was a mistake. Or it could mean that Trump voters are just that, Trump voters. And when Donald Trump himself isn't on the ballot, his fans aren't really interested in going to a voting booth.

Like, we had evidence of that in 2018 with Democrats' blue wave, but then again, midterms are generally rebuke against the party in power anyway, since voters for the party in power tend to be complacent. Now, all of that's to say that there's no way to be sure what this means, if it means anything at all. But if you look at it as a bellwether for midterms, when Donald Trump won't be on the ballot but he will be sure to endorse candidates across the party, then one major possibility is that Trump's endorsement isn't exactly the golden ticket that Republicans like to tell

themselves it is. But it wasn't just the Texas special election where he inserted himself and failed. Trump also butted in on infrastructure negotiations. Now, you might remember Infrastructure Week from the 200. weeks of it during the Trump era. Here's just a small sampling of what that looked like. Rebuild the country's infrastructure. Nobody can do that like me.

I'm a great deal maker. That's what I do. Who's better at infrastructure than Trump? Okay. We're working very strongly on an infrastructure package. We go on Infrastructure Week. Nobody could do that like me, he says. Right. Didn't get it done in four years.

Biden did it in six months. Okay, but knowing full well that Infrastructure Week was reduced to a punchline during his presidency and knowing that his skin is as thin as a butterfly's wing, Trump obviously had a vested interest in making sure that Infrastructure Week didn't actually happen. So, you know, he'd trashed McConnell for even entertaining the prospect. He spoke with his allies to get them to walk away from negotiations, but obviously it didn't make much of an impact, if any, considering the bipartisan infrastructure plan, overcame its first hurdle by passing with a 67 to 32 cloture vote in the Senate. And as far as Trump's attempts at undermining it go,

One Republican aide explains, quote, I don't think there's a lot there. It's not reverberating here. I don't think Rob Portman sees this and goes, oh, no, I have to give up. And clearly, with this bill passing with 17 Republicans, that assessment was correct. Now, a Trump aide explained Trump's frustration

pretty clearly here, saying, quote, they had four years to do an infrastructure deal with someone who knows infrastructure and actually builds buildings. But then the aide added, I'm just speaking for myself. He hasn't said, oh, they should have done it with me. but if they actually wanted infrastructure, they would have done it when President Trump was in there.

Like, my God, right. The Donald Trump, we all know, would never say that. That's just the AIDS's personal feelings. Got it. And they're sticking with this story. Like, according to Politico, Trump's aides are insisting that his opposition is based on the merits because he's worried about inflation. And, quote, opposes additional spending and believes the framework of the potential compromise

is too far tilted toward environmentally conscious projects and not hard infrastructure. And look, this is just an incomprehensible smattering of buzzwords, so I'm not going to engage here other than to say, if Donald Trump was actually worried about inflation, you'd think he'd have taken a little more seriously a pandemic that would go on to cripple our economy and destroy every last job created during his entire term. Like, you'd think he might have considered that during one of his daily diatribes pretending that COVID cases are created only after testing reveals them, or playing doctor and pushing hydroxychloroquine against the advice of the majority of the medical community. So, I'm sorry, but I don't think I'm buying his newfound concerns over inflation now that Biden's about to accomplish yet another promise that never materialized when he was in office. So look, as far as Trump's forays into the political arena have gone, I think this is significant

not just for the embarrassment factor, although that alone would be satisfying, but I think it's a testament to the guy's electoral impotence. Like, there's this myth of Trump that's being propped up by these grovelling elected officials who can't kiss his ass fast enough, that he's some magician, right? But he's not.

He's not especially popular. And that's not to say that his popularity on the right isn't high, because of course it is, but it certainly isn't nearly as high as you'd think, by the way, that Jim Jordan and Matt Gates take up residence in the guy's colon. He's the first one-term president in like 30 years since George H.W. Bush. He not only lost the general election by 7 million votes, but he actually ran behind all the

other Republican candidates. He was objectively a worse candidate than the rest of those in his own party. So I get that they're scared of him. I get that they feel like they need to grovel. I get that they've decided he's powerful, but it's really just because they're giving him power. Like when it comes to the voters in general, beyond his shrinking base, they're not afraid to reject him from November 3rd across the country to, you know, Texas's 6th congressional district. And if elected officials in the GOP didn't willfully contract every ounce of their own power to this guy, they'd probably realize that he's not as strong as they made him out to be. Next step is my interview with Senator Chris Murphy.

Okay, today we've got the U.S. Senator from Connecticut, Chris Murphy. Thanks for coming back on. Yeah, thanks for having me. So let's start off with the January 6th committee. The hearings have begun. My worry is that we already know how bad January 6 was. I think everybody, you know, that's become blatantly obvious for anybody who's been able to see what's going on the last six months. But with political polarization, the way that it is right now, what do you think that the impacts of these hearings are actually going to be?

Well, I don't think that we should assume that everybody in this country has seen all of the images. Obviously, the country moved on, you know, pretty quickly from the attack on the Capitol and getting ready for the inauguration of the, new president and all the plans and policies that came with it. So I think it is important, especially given all of the misinformation that's out there, given all the Republicans who are repeating this big lie over and over again, the new big lie that, you know, in fact, these are just tourists coming up and roaming the halls for folks to see how violent it was. So I do think that there is some important impact that comes from these visuals being put

over and over in front of individuals. And I do think that there are still a bunch of Republicans that, you know, do understand the threat that this president continues to pose to democracy. They are in the middle of making their minds up as to whether they can break from him or not. You're starting to see some anti-Trub candidates do a little bit better than you would expect in primaries.

And so keeping the heat on those Republicans of good conscience, right, with hearings like this, also helps try to facilitate the break inside the Republican Party from President Trump. I don't know that I would predict that that's going to happen. I still think he's likely to be the leader of their party for the next two years. But we should be in the business of making that alliance as uncomfortable as possible. Well, with that said, I mean, do you think that Trump should testify for the committee? I mean, sure.

I guess I haven't given that a lot of thought. But, you know, I assume his lawyers would do everything possible to prevent him from doing it. So I think it would be probably very instructive and very embarrassing for the president to give that testimony, but I imagine there's no way in how he would ever comply. Well, you know, in that same vein, you know, there are House Republicans like Mo Brooks, like Kevin McCarthy, just now, as we've recently found out, like Jim Jordan, all of whom have exposure, you know, in terms of either inciting the insurrection itself or speaking with Trump on the day of the insurrection.

Do you think that people like that should be called to testify? And, you know, are there any specific questions that you'd ask if you were on the committee? Well, I do think that the committee should do everything possible to reconstruct the events that happened during that day in the White House. So, you know, I was there. I was in that safe room. We were following the sort of information we were getting on a hourly basis. And, of course, we were hearing that the White House was deliberately slow walking, the response. to the riot and that in fact there were potentially some barriers being erected to the Guard and the military arriving on time. And so to know what conversations were happening and how

sort of deep the complicity might have been in the failure to defend the Capitol, I think is really important. I mean, I want every, if there are any individuals inside that White House who were either standing mind doing nothing or worse, arguing to not defend the Capitol, I want their reputations to be ruined for the rest of their careers. I want them never, ever to get a job in Republican politics or in the civil service ever again.

And so that information is coming out and the interviews that might be necessary to get that information, I think is really important. Yeah. Well, you know, I think that the point of these hearings is twofold. It's one, accountability for those. involved, and two, preventing it from ever happening again. But in a way, the insurrection is accomplishing its goal with these Republican-led legislatures across the country that are passing bills that give them the authority to overturn election results or install partisan

officials, you know, if there's accusations of fraud, which, of course, is the Republican's entire game plan. So why not introduce legislation that prevents against the most dangerous impacts of these bills by, for example, banning efforts to ignore the results of the popular vote or the ability for a state to send a separate slate of electors? Right now, I mean, the Congress ultimately is bound to certify the real results of the election. And so Congress, I don't think by existing law, has the ability to certify a group of electors that does not represent the winner of the election in that state. So you can put all the laws in place you want, but have been to do.

individuals willingly violate those laws, then they're not worth the paper that they're written on. So right now, the Constitution and the Electoral Count Act don't allow for Congress to seat a president who didn't actually win enough states and enough electoral votes. So I'm having to look into sort of additional protections, but what I worry is not that we won't have the laws of the federal level in place, but that individuals, as you said, and the states will ignore. those requirements and send the wrong electors or the wrong senator. And that's what keeps me up at night, right? The idea that, you know, there's a closed election in 2022 or 2024, a state decides to just ignore the results because the Democrat wins, sends a different senator to Washington.

And that is the moment where, you know, we all then have to decide whether we're still in this state, right? Whether we can actually have a country if that's how certain states behave. In that same vein, there was a new report in Mother Jones today that explained that the GOP could take back the house in 2022 by picking up seats under new gerrymandered maps just in Georgia, Texas, Florida, and North Carolina alone. So same question as before. I mean, why not a bill, even if the For the People Act, and I do have a question coming up on the For the People Act, but even if the For the People Act is too politically fraught, you know, why not a bill banning partisan gerrymandering? because, again, not getting that passed, and we don't have that much time, is basically making the conscious decision to allow Republicans to legislate Democrats out of government.

So obviously right now, you know, Washington is consumed with this infrastructure bill and then the build back better agenda. And many of us still have hoped that we're going to be able to pass the broader democracy reform proposal, which includes, as you know, an effective ban on political gerrymandering. If we can't do that, then I think we will have to examine how we pull pieces out of the For the People Act and pass them individually. Now, right now, you can't imagine passing any individual pieces of the For the People Act if you have to get 60 votes in the Senate. Republicans are not going to support a ban on political gerrymandering. So the only way to pass that by itself is to change the rules of the Senate.

And obviously, that is a difficult thing to do, made a lot harder by the fact that the president himself has come out much more vocally in opposition to filibuster reform. But to me, that still remains an absolute necessity to save democracy. That begs the question here. You know, Joe Manchin has come out very recently and said that his caucus is being respectful of his position on the filibuster, you know, but that he's also working to craft some iteration of voting rights legislation, unless I'm missing something. How does any of this get passed without reforming the filibuster as far as Joe Manchin is concerned?

I mean, listen, I don't want to let Republicans off the hook. I think sometimes we do that. We just sort of say, well, we can never pass voting rights with Republicans. And then Republicans never actually have to get asked why they don't support voting rights. So I think you've got to kind of double track. I think you have to have the expectation that Republicans are going to care about saving democracy and not just automatically let them. them off the hook. They should be getting asked by reporters why they think that partisan

gerrymandering is good for the country. But they don't because the whole conversation is on Democrats right now. Everybody says Democrats need to solve a problem. Republicans are hopeless. And so Republicans sit back in their, you know, big club chairs in their office, loving the fact that this is all about Democrats. And, you know, Senator Warnock was a wonderful job of this, of sort of reminding people that Republicans say on the hook, but yes, all that being said, it doesn't appear that there are pieces of that bill that can pass without changes in the rules. And our job is to try to convince our colleagues and the White House that democracy may not survive if we don't pass at least pieces of that agenda. I mean, I do think

this is existential. This is existential. And I've given speeches on the Senate. to that effect. I just haven't won the day yet. Well, you know, hopefully between, between, you know, people like you and your colleagues, those Texas Democrats, you know, there will be some movement there because like I mentioned before, there's not a ton of time. So with that said, I do want to switch gears here and speak about the National Security Powers Act. Now, you've introduced this legislation, this bipartisan legislation. Can you tell us what it is? So this is myself, Senator Lee of Utah and Bernie Sanders. And what it is, is, There's a massive rewrite of the national security laws giving more power to Congress and

the people and less to the executive branch. Right now, as we know, the White House is able to start wars overseas, whether it be a Republican or a Democrat, without concurrence of Congress. At the very least, they are certainly, as we speak, beginning low-level hostilities in countries like Somalia that the American people had no idea we were at war in. In addition, we're selling record levels of arms to countries, many of which have interests very adverse to the United States, terrible human rights records. And we have 30-something pending national emergencies in this country right now that give the

executive branch broad sweeping powers. Lee, Sanders, and I think that we need to bring that power back to Congress. And so what the bill does is says, if a war isn't authorized, then funding automatically is withheld for that military engagement. any authorization for military force that Congress passes expires after two years. On armed sales, right now, all Congress can do is try to pass a bill that objects to the arm sale. And it stills to be signed by the president, which makes it virtually impossible to stop an arm sale from going forward that a president wants. We reverse that presumption. We say the big

arms sales can't go forward unless the president gets a positive vote from the United States Congress. So it is a big increase in the workload of Congress on national security matters. But as it should be. As it should be. I mean, I think the founding fathers, you know, they put us first in the Constitution for a reason. They gave us a big long list of national security responsibilities. And I just think that the national, what I have come to believe, Brian, is that the national security establishment consensus in Washington, D.C., has been more wrong than the American people.

The American people are really skeptical of foreign entanglements. They're really skeptical of selling weapons overseas. The foreign policy establishment isn't here because they make money off them. And so I want to return power to the people on national security decision making. I think we'd be safer as a nation if we did that. Are there instances in which the president should have the ability to move without congressional approval? You know, and if so, what are the safeguards?

What are the guardrails that are being put in place? I think he should or she should, but it's a very limited aperture. So if there is going to be an immediate attack on the United States, then the President should be able to muster forces to defend us without coming to Congress first. If the United States has been attacked, it may be necessary to launch an immediate counter attack without coming to Congress. But once that emergency is dealt with, Congress has to authorize any future action. Right now, the president has sort of 30 to 60 days to come and get that authorization.

And even if he doesn't get it, he can continue spending money on that endeavor. What our bill says is that the president now has to come to us in 20 days, so it has basically three weeks to come and get authorization from Congress to continue whatever he's doing. And if the president doesn't get that authorization, then the money automatically stops. And the president cannot use any funding for that military action. So it just puts more power in the legislative branch, but still gives room for the president to deal with emergencies. So specifically now, President Biden set an August 31st deadline to end military operations

in Afghanistan. Even as we're leaving, the Taliban is taking over large swaths of that country. So how do we reconcile on one hand, you know, not having a perpetual presence in other countries and letting our soldiers finally come home with the fact that, you know, if and when we leave, it can immediately make those places more dangerous. Well, I think the United States sort of would have to step back and decide whether we are going to send our troops to every place in the world where there are bad people leaving that nation.

That would not be a wise expenditure of taxpayer dollars. And my constituents weren't told that we were going to Afghanistan to remove the Taliban. We were told that we were going to Afghanistan to get rid of al-Qaeda, and it was necessary to remove the Taliban in order to do that. What we see now is a Taliban that, yeah, maybe on the verge of coming back to power. But by the way, for the last decade, they've controlled 50, 60% of that country. It's not as if the Taliban was out of power during the Trump or Obama administration. They were controlling half a nation.

But what we have gotten is an agreement from the Taliban in which they say that we are not going to allow al-Qaeda to have any control or any portion of the country. And while we shouldn't trust that, we should trust and verify it, if indeed we can make sure that al-Qaeda doesn't have a footprint in Afghanistan, then I don't know that it's necessary to have thousands of U.S. troops there. And what we also know is that even when we try to expel bad regimes with U.S. troops, we often end up causing more problems than the ones that we were trying to solve, Iraq being the primary example, a bad ruler expelled with U.S. forces, a civil war that continues in some way, shape, or form to this day, because ultimately our troops there provided a rallying fry and recruitment tools to even worse actors than the Saddam Hussein regime.

What's the appetite for something like this in Congress right now and in the White House? You know, the White House is never excited about giving up national security powers, so I'm not sure that I'm not going to be waiting for a letter of endorsement from the Biden administration, but there is more interest in Congress. There are more Republicans and Democrats who uncomfortable with the way in which national security powers have been outsourced from Congress. It may not be that our entire comprehensive piece of legislation gets passed, but maybe it will stimulate a conversation about rewriting some of the current authorizations that have been way too broadly applied by both Democratic and Republican administrations. We still have that

Al-Qaeda authorization from 2001 on the books, and multiple administrations have used it to go to war with all sorts of terrorist groups that are not named al-Qaeda, simply because they have some association to al-Qaeda. Well, I don't think that that's constitutional. I think that the American people should have some input into whether we go to war with new terrorist organizations. And so maybe we do rewrite that authorization in a more limited fashion. Maybe the legislation introduced by myself and Senator Lee and Sanders helps push that effort along. a bipartisan infrastructure framework. We've got our BIF now.

You know, one element that I think has been of particular interest to young people is high-speed rail. You know, it's fast, it's cheap, it's good for the environment. Other countries are lapping us on this issue. I myself lived in France for a couple years. I took more trains than any other mode of transportation. Is there a future in which rail can be a big part of transportation in the U.S.? There has to be.

I mean, I just think of young people in Connecticut, right? I mean, the number of young people that would choose to live in New Haven, Connecticut, which is a wonderful small city, right, rivaling any other small city in the nation, if they could get to New York in an hour rather than an hour and 50 minutes today, which is, by the way, slower than the amount of time it took to get from New Haven to New York 60 years ago. Yeah. I mean, it would be transformational. There would be all sorts of people who would be willing to live.

in Connecticut if they could get to New York and Boston faster. It's an embarrassment. It's also a disincentive to companies located in the United States and the Northeast. When they can get to and from European capitals and Asian capitals in half the time that it takes to get from one major city to another in the United States,

they choose to locate their headquarters and their manufacturing operations, other places. So I'm worried that the bipartisan infrastructure deal doesn't have enough money to actually get high speed rail. might have only enough money to fix what's broken on the existing lines. And so many of us are arguing that in some way, shape, or form, the reconciliation bill, that sort of second bill that we're going to pass with Democratic-only votes, supplement the bipartisan bill to make sure that we get high-speed rail,

at least in some parts of the northeast and perhaps in other parts of the southeast or southwest. And is it the plan for the reconciliation bill to compensate even on hard infrastructure, elements that the bipartisan infrastructure framework doesn't cover? It remains to be seen. So I think that is a current debate that we're having right now. I will say this. There is no high-speed rail money in the bipartisan infrastructure bill. All of that money goes to sort of the existing system.

So I know there have been some that say that the reconciliation bill needs to be funding new things that weren't funded in the bipartisan deal. Well, high-speed rail is not funded in the bipartisan deal. So perhaps we'll be able to have money in the reconciliation bill for true high-speed rail. I want to end with a question on Twitter here, with the caveat being that Twitter is generally a bad place, but it's important. It drives the news. You're one of the few people on the left who's very good at using it. So have you been able to stress to your colleagues, you know, the importance of Twitter?

know, are you able to sit a few of them down and show them how to, you know, ratio someone? Is that a priority at all on the left? Because there's only a few people who are actually very competent at using it. That was my belief is that as an elected official, you can only be good on Twitter if it's your own voice. Because Twitter users are pretty sophisticated. They know when it's some communications director putting up some anodyne statement. You've got to commit to it yourself. That's a very scary thing for a lot of U.S. senators who are so used to not sending any communication about the world without it being vetted. I think that's such a mistake.

I think today people want to hear our authentic voice. They're willing to allow us to make mistakes. I mean, half the country still voted for Donald Trump because they knew they were hearing his authentic voice, even if some of the stuff he said was super stupid. And so I just think we've got to be more of risk takers in our communication. And I and Brian Schatz and Cory Booker kind of to lead this evangelism in the United States Senate. Hopefully some of our newer members like John Ossoff, who does, you know, do a lot of his own stuff on Twitter. We'll be able to model some behavior for others. But you're right.

It does help define the conversation. There was an article this morning showing that poverty in this country has been cut in half during the Biden administration. That's unbelievable. And so I sent out a text to all my online Senate friends saying, we have to flood social media with the story today, right? People need to know this because it's important. And if it comes from us, it'll get picked up and we can sort of help set the table. So I'm constantly trying to sort of work on everybody using it in a more strategic way.

Yeah. Of course, on the other end of that spectrum, you have the Senator Grassley's of the world who tweet. And, you know, I'm sure you've seen some of the dairy queen tweets that have been sent out. But it's awesome. People love his Twitter feed. And it's a perfect example of somebody that sends out some tweets that are really sort of hard to understand. But people follow him because they know it's actually him. And people today are desperate to hear our actual voices, right? They are so sick of getting all of our communication. So we just need to be more bold. All right. Well, Senator Murphy, thank you so much for taking the time. I really appreciate it.

Thanks, Brian. Thanks again to Senator Murphy. Now we've got a former member of the West Virginia State Senate and the national spokesman for the group No Damn Left Behind. Richard Ojetta. Richard, thanks so much for coming on. Hey, thanks, Brown. I really appreciate it. So I want to jump right in here with what I think is the most important question. You know, you're from West Virginia. That is a state that's been of particular focus lately. So, in your opinion, what's the best way to approach the Joe Manchin situation as a holdout on the filibuster, knowing that on one hand, democracy is at stake?

And on the other hand, bucking the party actually helps him in a state like West Virginia. You know, with Joe Manchin, I kind of feel like, you know, he may be a bridge too far. I hate to say it. But I think that the best thing that we could possibly do is to try to flip red seats blue so that we no longer have to rely on Joe Manchin. because at the end of the day, when it's time for him to step up to the plate, he proves that he's just, he's just not wanting to do what the Democrats need to get done. The Republicans want to go into 2022 and basically say the Democrats got nothing done. And the downside of this is that Joe Manchin and Sinema are actually helping them to be able to accomplish that. And that's, and it's just a shame.

Well, with that said, I mean, look, Manchin is part of a 50-50 Senate. that means we need all 50 Democrats. So what's the most effective way to pressure him? You know, because I think a lot of us fall into the trap of just whaling relentlessly into the void on Twitter and not exactly sure that's moving the needle here. No, I mean, you know, with Joe Manchin, obviously it's trying to reach out to him and let him know what he needs to do, what right looks like. The sad part about Joe Manchin is, and I believe, you know, when he ran for U.S. Senate the last time,

one of the things that he told people was this was it. This was going to be his last run. But you see all the things that he is doing. And what I am kind of reading from this is that I believe that in 2024, Joe Manchin is going to actually try to run for governor of West Virginia. And that will be it for him. And what he's doing right now is he's trying to relate with all the Republicans. He wants to go into 2024 and say, look, everybody, look at these photographs.

Look, me and Donald Trump had a great relationship. I was one of the ones that wanted to work with him. so that he can get the Republican vote in West Virginia to support him as well because he still is basically, you know, owed, not owed, but he actually had won his re-election for governor, but then immediately after he had won it, our United States Senator passed away, and he basically appointed himself to that role. So he still has another term that he could serve. Well, you know, speaking of Democrats serving in red states, tell us about no dem left behind. Well, no dem left behind. Well, no dem left behind.

I believe right now is probably the most important fight that we have in America today. Because if all we're going to do is focus on, you know, protecting the blue seats in blue areas, the best case scenario that we're going to get is 50-50 with Kamala Harris being the tie-breaking vote. But if we want to stop that, then we need to actually invest in red rural districts to flip red seats blue. And that's what no dim left behind does. We go into these areas. We're supporting Marcus Flowers. We're going to support, well, we're already supporting Val Demings and we're supporting

Tim Ryan. But we're looking at races all across this country to try to find solid candidates that absolutely have the ability to run and win in these areas so that we can take, you know, so we don't have to worry about the filibuster being always the, you know, the thing that keeps us from getting anything done. Yeah. We want to be able to flip red seats blue so we don't have to worry about the filibuster. Now, what have you found is the best way?

for Democrats to get elected in places that we'd consider, you know, deep red districts or states? Yeah, you got to find people that, you know, obviously, actually care, want to want to be heard and be willing to do things that the Republicans are never willing to do. And one of the things that I tell people all the time is that, you know what, initially live videos, going live and looking at the constituents in your area, whether it be a red area or not, and saying, This allows you better access to me than lobbyists. And I tell these candidates every, at least twice a week, do live videos

where you answer the questions of anybody who wants to come on there because you're not gonna see the Republicans do that. And if the Republicans do a live video, the questions are already given to them. They're not taking questions from people because they don't want to answer the questions of the people. But that lets folks know that you're willing to face them.

And then you let them know that if I'm successful I win, I will still do this at least weekly or bi-weekly where I allow you the ability to speak face to face with me on a live chat. That's crucial. So that's a big issue that I think is important, making sure that you're out there and you're willing to say what needs to be said. It's getting boots on the ground. It's working. You're not going to win these races in red districts unless you literally commit to it. And I tell people, it's like a combat deployment. You get off the airplane and you go nonstop until it's time to get back on the airplane and go home. If you have to sleep under a bridge to make sure that you can get, you know, to a location early in the morning, then you sleep

under that bridge. Get it done. You know, I know that you mentioned a couple races. What, what races are you most excited about heading into 2022? Well, you know, I want to go after. I want to go after these people. I want to go after the Jim Jordans. I want to go after the Lauren Bobberts, the Marjorie Trader Greens. You know, and here's the thing. The stuff that is going on right now, I believe, is really starting to wake people up. You know, when you realize that Jim Jordan has been in Congress for 10 years plus, and he has never so much as pushed and passed a single bill, you know, you've got to call these people out.

Your job is to go to Washington, D.C., to bring, funding back to bring capabilities back to your constituents. And these are people who have been there for decades and have done nothing. Matt Gates has accomplished nothing for his people. Marjorie Trader Green has done nothing but going and make a lot of noise, but she's done nothing. She doesn't even have a committee that she sits on because of her actions. So it's about letting people know this is who you have. And yep, they're a Republican, but they have done nothing for you. they have brought you no capabilities they have not made your lives any better so now try this person because this person is committed to going there and it's not about you know you got to

turn this into about that bridge about that road about that school we got to stop allowing the republicans to just make it abortion and they're going to take your guns no you actually bring it to what's important to the people yeah i mean they they rely on these cultural war issues like a crutch and I think at the end of the day, you know, it's not, it's not critical race theory that's impacting anybody's life, you know what I mean, on a day-to-day basis. Exactly. And that's what they're running with. And once again, we're already seeing the, they're going to now take your guns. They've never taken your guns. Democrats own guns, too. But once again, this is all they have because they cannot look you in the face and talk about the

issues. Yeah. One thing that I thought was, one thing that I think is pretty funny is, you know, we hear these socialism attacks that have been rearing up for decades. We had eight years of Bill Clinton. We had eight years of Barack Obama. We're now in a Biden presidency. And all of the things that they fearmongered that could happen if we elected Democrat, we've had decades of Democrats. And miraculously, the U.S. hasn't devolved into socialism.

So I just think it's funny that they can keep using these arguments when they've been disproven by virtue of having elected Democrats time and time again. They want to just make sure that on election day, they can convince the poorly educated to get up and go out and vote for them. Good old Republicans that are fighting for every child, they don't care about the fetus. These are the people that cut the programs to feed the child, to clothe the child, to educate the child. They don't care about that. I mean, if you go and look back, they're always screaming about how evil the Democratic Party are and how they're all a bunch of pedophiles. but who in the last two years in politics and at a national level has been caught doing things

the wrong way in that in that aspect Republicans you know I mean it's it's a double standard that they have and they push so I want to switch gears here and focus on COVID for a sec you know COVID cases are obviously back on the rise and we've seen that hospitalizations and deaths are almost exclusively among the unvaccinated and yet at the same time you have have right-wing media to this day that's been discouraging vaccines. So what's your response to people like Tucker Carlson, who I believe just a few days ago, said that Dr. Fauci created COVID, who've likened the vaccine to forced sterilization, grossly misrepresented VERS data, and on and on.

Yeah, this is absolutely atrocious, the behaviors of some of these people like Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, basically Fox News. you know, people are dying here. And what's really messed up is that once again, if you look at the people that are dying and you look at the spikes, they're in red districts. You know, you're killing your own base.

You're killing your own base. You know, the people out there that are screaming, I'm not going to get vaccinated. I don't trust it. These are those QAnon folks. And they vote Republican. And these people are basically convincing their own base to refuse the information.

intelligence that's coming from Dr. Fauci and just go with it. They're killing their own people. And I don't understand, you know, how they can't see this. But at the end of the day, there needs to be a reckoning. Fox News, these news anchors, you know, their attacks on the vaccine, their misinformation concerning the pandemic, they need to be held accountable. 600 and almost 30,000 Americans have lost their lives. And this is a pandemic.

We know that it was dereliction of duty when it comes to Donald Trump. Donald Trump needs to be held accountable for this. Donald Trump actually said right before the November election that as soon as the election is over, you're probably not going to hear from me at the end. Basically saying that this was all nothing more than a hope to try to derail his campaign. Millions of people across the globe have lost their lives. this. And for these people to try to equate it to the Holocaust and things like that is absolutely sickening and they all need to be held accountable. People have children are dying. Children are

dying. The hospitals are filled to capacity now. We're not going forward. We're moving backwards. Mask mandates are coming back out. I mean, it is it is atrocious that we have so many people that are supposed to be leaders in this country that are taking people down this path. that are going to cause them to lose their loved ones, to lose their lives, to lose their health. And that's what we're going, and it is sickening, and it needs to be dealt with. Really well said.

So I want to end on this. You know, we've heard from Republicans for years about the platitudes about being the back of the blue party, the pro-police party. Since then, of course, you know, we've watched as Republicans have attacked the Capitol Police for speaking out about their lives being put in danger on January 6th, Fox News hosts have been mocking them,

Conservative pundits have been saying that they're unfit to serve. You know, you were a member of the military. You served in the Army for 24 years. What's your response to these pundits mocking law enforcement from their couches? Well, you know, first and foremost, the whole back the blue thing was nothing more than a ploy to try to get the police to join their side. You know, the moment that they got to that point where the police said, you can no longer go past this point, then all of the sudden, the police become the enemy of the people. And that's what we've seen. And, you know, when you listen to those four police officers and their testimonies, if it didn't hit you in the chest, if it didn't

hurt your feelings knowing that those people in their fighting for their lives, those African-American police officers were hit with racial slurs that showed exactly who those people really were that attacked our capital. You know, this is absolutely unacceptable. You know, do, I want to see bad police officers held accountable. I'm tired of watching African Americans die because they move their hands from the 10 and 2 to the 9 and 3. But we do have great police officers out there as well. And, you know, this was nothing more than a, this was an attack.

And to try to paint the police, especially the Capitol Police, and those police officers that absolutely responded because they heard the calls on the radio, like Officer Fanon, for anybody to look at them in any other way than they are absolute national heroes. Heroes, they should be given everything that they could possibly need. They need to get better funding. They need to make sure that their health care is taken care of. And anybody that's against that is absolutely pure trash in my book. Those people are heroes. And what we saw on January

the 6th is that racism in this country is absolutely not it is alive and well and we need to do something to deal with it yeah i'm glad that you brought up the uh the issue of those of those racial epithets because uh you know that was the that was the part when listening to those uh testimonies that really uh hit me i mean there was there was i believe one police officer said that he'd never been called any racial slur in his entire life and to to have it be done defending the capital in Washington, D.C. is just a... Yeah, that streak ended that day. Yeah.

And then, you know, they find themselves attacked. I mean, I think back about the guy that had the hockey stick, and he was just hammering people with that hockey stick. You know, you saw bricks, you saw things being thrown at police officers. And, you know, you hear how, you know, the one police officer had to fight his way to get into the Capitol. And then the moment he got into the... Capitol, then he had to fight his way to the front and then fight. I mean, he was the one that was

crushed in the door. They ripped off his mask. You know, if you can't listen to those stories and look at them as heroes, then you're not a good person. You have a, you have a flaw in your system that does not recognize that, you know. And then, you know, if you're there, you know, some of those people had camp out camp auschwitz shirts on these people have mental flaws racist people in this country absolutely are flawed mentally and it's just it we saw it all in full view on january the 6th i do have one more question and that is uh is is another run for office in your future well you know i'm getting ready to leave west virginia and move to north carolina i'm not going to north Carolina to run for office, I don't need to be a politician. It was never about a position or a title

for me. It was about fighting people that don't do their damn jobs and making them do their jobs. Now, I'm not going to North Carolina to run for office, but I'm never going to say never, because if I go someplace and I see somebody that's up there that thinks that they can do what they want when they want and they don't want to represent the people, then I reserve the right to poke them in the face. Richard, where can we hear more from you? Well, I go live every night. I have my regular Facebook and I got the blue check mark. I go live every night from 8 to 9 o'clock.

I have a YouTube page called Airborne. And of course, my Twitter name is Ojetta, number four, America. And I do live videos. I let the people ask me questions and stuff. And I do it every night. And of course, obviously you can also follow No Dem Left Behind. And remember that we're the ones going into the red rural areas to try to flip seats blue, and we can't do it without you.

Great, great. Well, Richard, you know, your passion is inspiring. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk. I appreciate it. Brother, thank you for having me on, man. Thanks again to Richard Ojetta. Some last notes here. I'm still raising money for the Texas Democrats

who fled to Washington, D.C. to deprive Republicans of the quorum needed to pass their voter suppression bill. These Democrats are the one and only line of defense against this bill getting passed. So if you support what they're doing, please donate a few bucks. Link is in the episode notes. And finally, we're just about at the halfway point goal for the Don't Be a Mitch fund.

So if you'd like to support voter registration and voter outreach groups in nine key states ahead of the 2022 midterms, you can donate to that fund too. And the link is also in the episode notes. And again, doing this work now is what makes a difference, not just throwing cash at a super pack in October of an election year. So please help support the people on the ground who are setting the stage for Democrats to flip some desperately needed seats in November of 2022. Okay, 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.