No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen - Trump sinks his OWN case with devastating mishap

Episode Date: June 25, 2023

Trump sinking his own case on the campaign trail. Brian interviews Congressman Jared Moskowitz about the Republicans’ hypocrisy in censuring Adam Schiff while protecting George Santos and Donald Trump and his response to the GOP’s obsession with gas stoves. And Congressman Ro Khanna joins to discuss the massive $886 billion defense bill that he was the lone NO vote on, and his effort to push to White House to have a plan in place in case the Supreme Court blocks Biden's student debt cancellation plan.Donate to the "Don't Be A Mitch" fund: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/dontbeamitchShop merch: https://briantylercohen.com/shopYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/briantylercohenTwitter: https://twitter.com/briantylercohenFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/briantylercohenInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/briantylercohenPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/briantylercohenNewsletter: https://www.briantylercohen.com/sign-upWritten by Brian Tyler CohenProduced by Sam GraberRecorded in Los Angeles, CASee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Today we're going to talk about Trump sinking his own case on the campaign trail. I interview Congressman Jared Moskowitz about the Republican's hypocrisy and censuring Adam Schiff while protecting George Santos and Donald Trump and his response to the GOP's obsession with gas stoves. And I interview Congressman Roe Kana about the massive $886 billion defense bill that he was the loan no vote on and his effort to push the White House to have a plan in place in case the Supreme Court blocks his student loan debt cancellation plan. I'm Brian Teller Cohen and you're listening to No Lie. Okay, so before we jump in, just a little note up top, you may have seen some of my posts online, but I signed a deal with MSNBC as a contributor.

So I'll be doing some on-air appearances, and I'll be doing some video content for their YouTube channel and some op-eds for MSNBC.com. You won't notice a difference in terms of my existing content, and I never really liked to sleep anyway, so... But I'm really excited to dive in. It is a great network, the only mainstream network that leads with progressive values, so I'm really proud to be a part of that team. and hopefully you'll tune in and check it out when I'm on.

Okay, so getting to the news, we do have a pretty consequential update from Jack Smith. He requested that the judge presiding over that case, the classified documents case, Judge Cannon, move the trial date from the intended start date of August 14th to December 11, 2023. Now, he noted that the defense counsel is going to need time to obtain the necessary security clearances and then actually review that evidence. So this is the DOJ making a good faith effort to actually give Trump's defense team time. And I say good faith because then you've got Trump's defense team, which actually opposes this move, which confused the hell out of me until I realize that the reason they oppose it isn't because they don't want to vacate the August trial date. They definitely do.

They just want it delayed even further than December. Remember, the longer they can push this thing out, the better chance they'll have at Trump winning the presidency and then using his position as president to quash these investigations. So if December seems a bit far off for comfort, just recognize that Jack Smith was probably making a way. pretty sound calculation by choosing a date that gives the defense more than enough time to do what they need to do, while also not being so far into the future that we risk any undue interference from the election. But to be honest, the date of the trial should be the least of Trump's attorney's concerns. What should actually be their concern is the fact that their client is currently on the campaign trail building a pretty airtight case against himself.

Here's Trump from just days ago, yet again confessing to the crime that he is currently facing prosecution for. In other words, whatever documents the president decides to take with him, he has the absolute right to take them. He has the absolute right to keep them. Or he can give them back to Nara if he wants. He talks to them like we were doing. And he can do that if he wants.

That's the law. And it couldn't be more clear. So first off, that is literally not the law. That is a figment of Trump's imagination because, I don't know, the president of judicial watch, Tom Fitten, told him that's the law. But it's not. I mean, just use some common sense here. Why would a law that was passed after Watergate in response to Nixon seeking to destroy

records relating to his presidential tenure upon his resignation give presidents more latitude to steal documents? It makes no sense on its face. The Presidential Records Act established that presidential records belong to the U.S. government, not the president personally and therefore must be preserved. That's it. Pretty simple. But what Trump is trying to do is just throw out some legal jargon in hopes that it'll sound

to more official, that it'll sound like he knows what he's talking about? When you start, like, name-checking legislation or statutes, it gives the impression that you know what you're talking about, that you're an expert. Only, in this situation, all Trump is doing is literally invoking the exact law he broke. It's like, if I set a building on fire, and then when the cops came to arrest me, I was like, uh, sorry, fellas, maybe look up the definition of arson. Like, but think about what Trump is actually doing.

He is broadcasting that he stole the documents because the law said it was fine. Now, that's not what the law says, and the judge and the jury will be made well aware of that. But Trump is hinging his entire defense on that very, very easily debunkable lie. So the moment they prove what the law says, which again will be easy because the Presidential Records Act does not give a president carte blanche to take classified documents like their fortune cookies, then Trump's defense is shot. Like, I honestly can't imagine what's going through his head that his strategy here is to pretend that a law that says one thing, says another thing, and then, to just basically admit to the crime because you're playing make-believe with regard to that law.

It may work on the suckers who believe him, you know, at that rally, but again, it arguably could not be dumber when it comes time to show up in a courtroom. So look, does the water wall-to-all media coverage of Trump drive everyone crazy? Yes. But the silver lining is that the more he talks,

the more ammo he gives those same prosecutors who are going to be fighting in court to make sure he is held accountable for his crimes. Trump's fortunes don't change at all depending on how many rallies he does. Those are already his die-hard fans. They are already showing up for him. He's got them.

These rallies are to feed his ego and to bilk those marks for more cash. But what will change is when he hands prosecutors more evidence to use against him in court. So the Trump show may be tired, but at this point, he's not only acting as the defendant in this case. He's also lending hands of the prosecution. Next up is my interview with Congressman Jared Moskowitz. Now I've got the congressman for Florida's 23rd Congressional District, Jared Moskowitz. Thanks so much for taking the time. Thanks, Brian.

Appreciate for having me. So we are coming off of the House resolution to censure Adam Schiff because the Republican Party apparently has a zero tolerance policy for what they view as inappropriate behavior. Did I miss the George Santos censure? Well, look, sometimes you get a gift. I mean, Adam really should put that down

as an in-kind contribution to his campaign. I mean, as we know, he's running for US Senate. And here they go by making him a hero. And so, look, this is, again, the 118th Congress. The American people have seen it. We're producing very little, if anything. It's a grievance Congress. And so, look, you know, this place is like high school, right?

You know, other people here have been censured for real things before. Paul Gossar being one of them. So this is tit for tat. You know, we remove people from committee for legitimate things. They decided, you know what, we're going to get them back and we're going to remove some Democrats from committees, including Adam Schiff. But how many Americans has this helped? Who's helped by this? Nobody.

It's a grievance thing to feed into Fox News, to feed into social media, just to get, just to get, you know, people who are angry. Mostly Trump, by the way, this is, that's another thing. This is really an audience of one. This is all for Donald Trump getting, you know, trying to make him happy. Nancy Pelosi, who I thought was fantastic on the floor, she looked over to them and she literally said, she goes, you guys look miserable, just miserable. Yeah. Well, you know, with the question, obviously, it was being flippant, but what does it say? that a party that seeks to punish Adam Schiff for the crime of investigating a known indicted

criminal is simultaneously lining up to defend the George Santos's and Donald Trump and whatever other liars and thieves and criminals they can find. You know, I mean, and that's one of the things, right? They have no credibility on these topics, okay? But they don't, that doesn't seem to stop them, right? Literally, they're trying to go after someone on ethics while they're protecting someone right now who was literally under investigation by the Department of Justice, been charged, okay, just had to release the people who paid for his bail in George Santos.

And yet they pretend like it doesn't happen. Like, he doesn't exist. Yeah. They have no credibility in these oversight hearings. You know, every time they talk about people who are not, you know, they're not willing to comply with a subpoena. I'm sorry. These are the people cheering on the Trump administration not to comply with subpoenas.

But, you know, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. Right. They have, they're absolute hypocrites, but what they count on is they count on the American people forgetting that they did all of that stuff. You know, to that point, the circus of it all, there was a moment just a few days ago where Marjorie Teller Green and Lauren Bobert clashed on the House floor because each of them were vying to introduce a resolution to impeach Joe Biden before the other one could. What was the feeling, you know, among both Republicans and Democrats when this thing kind of spilled out into the open? I mean, the feeling, quite frankly, is I have my money on Marjorie Taylor Green. I mean, that's the feeling. I mean, if you said, Jared, you got to bet a thousand dollars, who you're betting?

I'm taking Marjorie. I mean, even seen her clean and jerk videos in her garage. I mean, so I would take Marjorie in that. But look, my guess is they, and I don't know personally, my guess is they probably had a little beef before. This is not something new. Marjorie, you know, filed articles of impeachment against everybody. You know, she has impeached half the Biden administration with what she's filed.

And look, she's mad that, you know, Lauren took it a step further and actually, you know, try to force a vote on it, which, by the way, they didn't, they didn't vote whether to impeach Joe Biden. they're now setting it to the Homeland Security Committee. Why? They don't have the votes. They don't have the votes to impeach Joe Biden. Why? Well, he didn't commit high crimes and misdemeanors. They don't have any evidence of that. Right. So now they're going to send it to Homeland and they're going to try to convince the American people for the next several months that Joe Biden should be impeached. I say, go ahead, impeach him. If you think that he committed a crime, impeach him. But they don't have any evidence. They got nothing. They're trying to tell the American people one day that he's slow, he's old, right? But now he's Tony Soprano, leading the Biden crime family.

And somehow Hunter is like Kaiser Sosek. I mean, it's just absolutely lunacy. But this is what they got. This is what their viewers, their primary voters want to see. It's retribution, its grievance. This is the entirety of their agenda. I don't know what they're for. I definitely know what they're against. You know, I do want to move on to the preeminent issue of our time here. That is the greatest threat facing America today. And I think you can, I think you're starting to pick up on gas stoves, right? Gas stoves. So what are you doing, Congressman, to protect gas stoves? And do you think it's enough? Well, I mean, look, I hope General Electric leads the troops into battle to fight this war on gas stoves. I mean,

at the end of the day, right, we have efficiency standards. So all of our appliances have efficiency standards. Your refrigerator, your dishwasher, and guess what? Your gas stove has efficiency standards. So all the Biden administration was doing was doing more efficiency standard stuff. Nothing was being banned. But they turned it, they turned it into a ban. And they do this all the time, right? They try to create some sort of sense that the government's coming after you. The government's going to knock on your door and take away your stuff, right? Intrusion. And they get tried of people, you know, get all upset and agitated. And so look, I called that out. you know, multiple times to point out the fact that, you know, these folks have had multiple

hearings. They did gas stove week, multiple bills on guest stoves. Not one thing on gun violence prevention. Six months we've been here. You know what, fine. We can't agree on gun violence prevention. How about school safety? Not one thing on school safety. Nothing to produce, nothing for parents, parents that they're putting their kids to bed at night and setting them to school in the morning or to the movie theater or the mall, taking them in the grocery store. No, nothing for those parents. But hey, if you own a gas stove, maybe a nice one, a Viking, You know, good to know that the Republicans are fighting for you, although it's a lie. And so I voted for their bills because I also know at the same time, you vote against it.

You know what they're going to do? They're going to send a mailer out to your district because that's the whole point of this. It's all messaging bills. Don't listen to me. Listen to the Freedom Caucus that called out their own Republicans for all these messaging bills. But they'll send out a mailer that will say Jared Moskowitz is coming to take your guest. I'm not going to participate in that nonsense. Yeah.

Is there any sense of embarrassment? Like, when you stand up and you've been really effective at this, you've been really effective at like standing up and putting on full display the lunacy of what they're doing. But does it ever give them pause then when they've been made fun of so blatantly about this stuff, about these like clown car issues to then move forward and do this stuff again and again? Well, a couple things. First of all, a lot of them, especially, you know, in the Freedom Caucus or, you know, the Mago wing of that party, they have no shame. I mean, there's just no shame there. So you can't shame people, you can't shame people who are unshamable. That's number one.

Number two is, unfortunately, as you know, a lot of our media today is so segmented, right? We're in our bubbles. So what they count on is that their people never see it. They never see us pointing out the ridiculousness of what they're doing, the fact that they're doing gas stoves and not gun violence, right? That they're not doing background checks or red flag laws supported by over 80% of Americans, you know, but they're censuring Adam's shift and, you know, helping him on his senatorial campaign. Yeah. You know, so that's what they're planning on.

They're planning on that nobody sees it in their, in their orbit. What I can tell you is when you really get them, you kind of know, because they kind of do a little wink in a nod or they make a comment to you after. And so you know, you kind of got them. But again, they really count on the fact that their voters don't ever see that stuff. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's just like blatant manipulation in real time. And they do the same thing, by the way, with all of Donald Trump's crimes.

I mean, he'll, the guy can get thrown in jail for 40 years, and he would be out there claiming complete and total exoneration. And you'd have all of all of right-wing media lining up behind him and repeating the same thing, like little lemmings. Well, and that's really the difference. Take the Hunter Biden thing, right? So Hunter Biden is pleading to a crime, okay? How many Democrats have come out and said the DOJ should be defunded and the weaponization of the FBI? Nobody. Not a single one.

Why? Because we take our meds. You know, they're out there. there going, you know, that we should start defunding the government because Donald Trump literally is showering with classified documents. And the only reason I think he's showering with them is why are they near the shower? I thought it was just for convenience. You know, they're doing all of this hunter stuff and all this Biden stuff as a distraction. It's all about distracting. It's all about deflecting. Donald Trump showed them how to do that. Any attack on Donald, the one thing he's very good at

is if he knows he has a weakness, he immediately takes that weakness and puts it on his opponent. So look, he's in trouble, right? Bill Barr says he's toast. Chris Christie says he's in trouble. These are two former prosecutors, both have worked for Donald Trump at different points, right? Chris Christie being on the transition team, Belbar being the actual attorney general. Okay. And so they know they're guys in trouble. So what do they do? How do we take the most boring family in America and turn them into the Gambino crime family? Oh, I know. We'll just start talking about stuff, you know, the 1023 forum that was filled out full. years ago based on information that's seven years old that is double hearsay from two people

saying a conversation that was completely in russian we'll say there's 17 tapes where are the tapes nobody knows we'll say we have informants oh produce the informants uh we lost them hey we got this we got this laptop let's we got this laptop with all this information great show the american people the information on the laptop oh well we can't show them that you know you got you know what's his name senator grassley you know in the senate acting like you know he knows everything i mean the guy still using is Blackberry. And by the way, his service was turned off, you know, many years ago. And so this is what they're doing.

But you know what? What happens is they got a machine that feeds it, right? And it feeds it to them on social media. It feeds it to them on Twitter. It feeds it to them on Fox News and Newsmax and own every single solitary day, like clockwork. It's all they get. So in that atmosphere, in that arena, if they're getting it every single solitary day,

and that's all they're getting, then that's their reality. Their reality is that, as they say, Joe Biden is the most corrupt president of all time. Really? Joe Biden? I mean, you guys say that he never comes out of his basement, and he's now the most corrupt politician in the history of this country?

I mean, it's just, right, Richard Nixon. Forget about Richard. You know, it's Joe Biden. Most American people know that's not true. And what Democrats have to do is we have to find creative ways to point out the hypocrisy of it all. Yeah, I've said a million times on my videos, it is not about the facts with any of this stuff.

It is about the narrative. They will say whatever they need to, just to get these things into the narrative, facts be damned. Even Donald Trump said it. We found out through the January 6th committee that he, I forgot what it was specifically, but he was like, just make an announcement

that we're looking into it, we'll take care of the rest. It is just about introducing the idea. And they're honest. And by way, they're honest about it, right? Comer talks about, hey, you know, Donald Trump's poll number. are up, you know, and, you know, Grassley and the Senate talks about, well, we're not really

interested in the facts, you know, they just, they just want to go with innuendo. They just want to go with, hey, maybe this, maybe that. What is this? Five million. Let's throw that out there. By the way, my favorite part about this whole thing is this 1023 form. Every congressman who got to view this 1023 form, by the way, with the FBI sitting next to you in a skiff, right? it's a classified document the first page of it specifically says do not share anything outside of this room within this document and then they all go out they had a microphone set up outside the room okay to share all of the information that literally they pledged not to share why and so like this is this is not a serious thing that they're doing okay it's off off broadway it's totally performative but we have to deal with it

And we have to combat it and we have to explain to the American people what we should be working on, what our agenda is, and how all of this stuff that they're doing doesn't help any single American in their everyday lives. And oh, by the way, it's false. If they had evidence of Joe Biden did something wrong, show it to the American people. If they had evidence that Hunter Biden did something beyond what he's been charged with, show it to the American people. It's a five-year investigation and they got him for tax evasion and a gun. By the way, I'm pretty sure those are the prerequisites to get into the Freedom Caucus. Right. You have evidence. What are they afraid of? Show it. Trust the American people. Show us the goods.

They don't have anything. To that point on Hunter Biden, you know, he did sign that, agreed to that plea deal for failing to pay his taxes in a timely matter. Republicans are claiming that that plea deal is totally unacceptable. And yet at the same time, they're working nonstop to defund the IRS, which would literally enforce exactly this kind of behavior. So is there any squaring that for Republicans, or is this just full cognitive dissonance? Full cognitive dissonance. And you're never going to connect. It's never, you're never going to

connect to. You know, they were all out there saying Hunter got a sweetheart deal. How do you know that? You don't know that. You don't know what evidence the Trump appointed U.S. attorney had or didn't have. Maybe the case was really weak, right? And Hunter just said, I don't want to go through a trial, so I'm going to take a plea deal. Right? So we don't know. But they immediately pivot. to what a sweetheart deal. By the way, we don't know that Donald Trump couldn't get a plea deal. Do we know that? Maybe he turned down a plea deal.

Maybe he turned down a deal that there'd be no jail time. But he didn't want to do that. Maybe he didn't even want to take a meeting on a plea deal. We don't know any of this stuff. But they immediately go to what they want to sell. And listen, they're very good at sales. Again, they learn that from Donald Trump. Donald Trump could sell blenders to the American people.

And, you know, there's a big segment of the population that would buy blenders from Donald Trump all day long. When he told us he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it, we all chuckled and laughed. But boy, he was really correct when he said that. Every time he gets indicted, his numbers go up. He's got like indictmentment going on. I mean, at this point, he's probably like, hey, two or three more indictments. I win Iowa. So I want to finish off with this.

Can you offer any words of encouragement on behalf of Florida Democrats? because Florida doesn't exactly inspire much hope these days. Well, first, let me say this. I'm happy to see that the Biden campaign is going to play in Florida. Florida is right now, you know, Magadonia, Maga Land. You got Trump and DeSantis, both residents of Florida, right? You're talking about the third largest state. And so we got to play there.

Okay, so I'm really encouraged that the Biden administration, Biden campaign is not writing it all. That's number one. What I would say to Florida Democrats is, listen, look, the last election, was a shalacking. We lost by 19 points. There's lots of reasons that happened. It didn't happen overnight. They've been investing in their infrastructure. They're Florida Republicans. It goes back to Rick Scott, Ron DeSantis, investing in registration and communication, building that whole infrastructure. And we didn't. We got national fundraisers that don't give any money to the party,

but they give money to candidates. And so we got to figure out how to bring those folks in to build that. We also have an opportunity with corporate America. The Florida Republican Party has turned their back on corporate America. They want to put government into corporations. Again, a weird thing that's happening in Florida. I thought Republicans for small government, government out of your lives. Nope. Government in your life, government in your bedroom, government in your business, government, you know, in Disney World, government everywhere.

So we have an opportunity to try to figure out how we can work with corporate America. Again, to raise more dollars into the Democratic Party. Once we can figure out how to raise more money, then we can invest in registration. Republicans have outregistered us for the first time in history. We've got to go back to registering Democrats. And then we got to communicate to them. And we can't be a grievance party. We turned into what the Republicans are in Florida, a grievance party.

We were an anti-Rond de Santas party. And don't get me wrong, there's plenty of policies to be anti-on. But what are we for? We've got to tell Democrats what we're for, right? We've seen that time and time again. The grievance thing doesn't work. And so we have to have a platform. We also have to fight back on things that aren't true.

In Miami-Dade, a lot of Cubans and Venezuelans believe the Democratic Party in Florida are socialist. We're not socialists. Okay, we got to fight back. You can't just say we're not socialists, right? That doesn't work. You got to explain to people and you got to explain them with policies. And so look, all hope is not lost. Florida is much closer than people think it is. We also have a six-week abortion ban that just went into effect in Florida. That is going to drive Democrats out. You know, we got to book bans going on. That's going to drive Democrats out. We've got to raise money. We've got to build the infrastructure. We've got to register voters. We've got to engage them. And listen, you know, you're not going to go overnight from losing by 19 points to winning by five, right? It's going to take time. I have confidence in Nikki Fried that she's going to try to do that. Well, we'll leave it there. This seems like a good place to end. So Congressman, Jared Moskowitz, thanks so much for taking the time. I appreciate it. Thank you. And congrats on

MSNBC. Now we've got the congressman for California's 17th congressional district, Rokana. Thanks for coming back on. Thanks, Brian. Congrats on your new role at MSNBC. Thank you. Thanks so much. So the House Armed Services Committee voted 58 to one to approve its $886 billion defense bill. You were the only no vote. How do we end a 20-year war and our defense spending goes up by hundreds of billions of dollars? And I mean that earnestly. Like, what is the rationale to do that? You'd think there'd be some peace dividend after the end of the Cold War, after the end of the Iraq War, after the Iraq War, after we pull back our troops, but it's going up. And one of the reasons it's going up is defense

contractors. I mean, almost half of the discretionary budget goes to defense contractors. Anyone who saw the 60 Minutes report knows that there's just a ton of fraud. There's a ton of abuse. I had led a couple of years ago a hearing into Transdine where they basically acknowledged that they were jacking up prices 1,000 percent because there's no competition. So there should be outrage. I don't care what party you are. that taxpayer dollars are just being wasted. And then you have things that are just duplicative. You know, we have the B-21 bombers, which are new and better aircraft.

But we're still buying the B-1-2-B bombers, which aren't as necessary anymore. The F-35s that cost overruns, we're still buying them. We're trying to get new ICBM missiles, which we don't need when we could just fix and modernize the current ones. And I can go on and on. But no, it's a very hard voting, apparently for folks. I don't know why in the beltway, it's hard. People understand that they don't want more wasteful spending. You know, to that point, there are progressives on that committee.

How is it that even the progressives, aside from you, all voted in favor? I'm curious what strikes so much fear into the hearts of even those on the left that even progressives are basically rubber stamping almost a trillion bucks a year? We're going to have a trillion dollar defense budget. I mean, just to put this in context, I think President Clinton is the last Democratic president who actually tried to cut the defense budget. And George Bush Sr. did. And it was around 400 billion when he left, but two and a half times more. And about 600 billion when President Obama left. There are a couple of reasons. One people don't want to be seen as weak on national security. But I believe you can say we want to have a modern national security strategy that actually is investing in things like AI and drone.

technology and submarines and space, not the outdated technology legacy industries of defense contractors. Two, there's a lot of influence that defense contractors have on politics. I mean, they're contributors, they're active lobbyists on the hill. But it's, you know, it's over half our discretionary budget at this point, almost 55 percent of our federal budget, discretion dollars are going on defense you mentioned national security i mean like i i feel like we've heard this argument a thousand times but doesn't it also hurt our national security if we are not feeding people if we're not educating people if we don't have uh uh infrastructure up to par in this country i mean every single person on that committee represents what 700 000

americans all of whom uh ostensibly need some type of service benefit in some way from from the government so uh i guess can you square this for me well think of it this way Look, we're a trillion dollars almost over 10 years. That's $10 trillion investment in defense. If we had done, let's say just $800 billion, and we had an extra two trillion dollars. You know, we could build new modern factories in every congressional district in this country.

Canton, North Carolina, where 900 people are being laid off the paper mill. We could have a new factory there. We could create far more jobs, far more jobs in every district paying better quality jobs if we had just a fraction of it invested elsewhere, let alone the things we could do on health care and education. But even on jobs, which is what people argue, there are better ways to create good-paying jobs. So it is we're in this vicious cycle.

And have you ever noticed, Brian, that for defense, they always use the one-year number, but for any other program, they use the 10-year number? Yeah. Like, no one says, okay, it's going to be a $10 trillion defense package. But when we were talking about investment in the climate, right, IRA, it's, oh, this is going to cost $369 billion. That's over 10 years. Yeah. That's over 10 years. In defense, it's over one year. Just putting it on top there. I guess I just refuse to

believe this notion that it is more damaging to a congressperson who's voting in favor of this because they'll seem weak by virtue of not dumping money into the lap of Northrop Gruntman, you know, as opposed to opening up that factory in their own district like you were just alluding to. I feel like the people who are voting for these people would much rather have more jobs in their district, more funding for services, for emergency services, for education, for whatever it is, as opposed to just dumping money into the lapse of military contractors. And that's what the polling shows. By two to one, people say there are better ways of creating jobs, better ways of investing here at home. We've got bases overseas that are designed for the Cold War. The Cold War ended in 1989. I mean, you got the Joint Chiefs of Sam Millie saying there's too much overseas infrastructure.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff is begging us to say, let's take a look at these overseas bases and we're not willing to do it because of interest. And I, you know, but I can tell. Look, when I voted Noah and you vote electronically, the whole place on the scoreboard, you look at it is green and there's one no vote, Kana, and everyone's kind of looking at me. And Congress is a little bit like high school. You know, you don't want to be the person on the lunch table where no one else wants to sit. What was the reaction? What was the reaction behind the scenes when you were the lone no vote against that bill? I mean, behind the scenes, there was a little bit of chuckle.

And then someone came up and said, why do you always vote no on these things? And I said, it's not that I always vote no. It's that we always are adding more money than even the president wants. And if there was a reasonable defense budget, I would vote yes. But there's sort of a, and everyone gave a standing ovation afterwards to the staff, which I appreciate. I get the staff for it's hard, but there's this sense of that they're doing this important work, which we are, but no one's willing to question the status quo other than the American people. And this is one of the things that people see is broken when people realize

how much money is going to these defense contractors. Well, is there any likelihood in our lifetime that we would see defense spending go down so that we can allocate funding to, oh, I don't know, feeding people in our own country or infrastructure in our own country or anything else as opposed to, you know, heaping it on to military contractors? You know, the honest truth on it? We need a progressive president who puts that in their platform and runs on it. Jimmy Carter, I think, is the last president who ran on a 5% defense cut and holding people accountable. But we need, we've got to be unafraid to say we can stand up to China, we can stand up to Russia,

we can stand up to threats, we're not going to be weak, we're going to have a modern national security strategy, but we're not going to waste taxpayer dollars on just enriching defense contractors, and we're going to enforce competition. And the reason you need the president is because the president sets the tone, and then you're still going to have at that point, let's say just hypothetically a progressive one and offers five percent cuts, then you're going to have Congress add to it, add to add more to it. But you're going to need a commander-in-chief who stands up to it. But here's what gives me hope. Most people in this country, one, they recognize that the biggest risk threat to us is climate. They want that investment. And do they understand even on

China that there are much smarter ways we can be investing to keep the Taiwan Straits and others seize open than what we are today? All right. So I want to switch gears a little bit here. We are now waiting on a Supreme Court ruling where we'll find out if the court is going to nix Biden's student loan debt cancellation plan, you're pushing the White House to put a contingency plan in place. What's the status of that effort? Well, the White House is saying that they are aware of the issue, that they're working on it. But let me just break this down pretty simply. There are 45 million Americans who got relief. If the White House, if it doesn't have a plan and the Supreme Court strikes this down, they're suddenly going to have to start repaying their loans

in September, loans that they haven't had to pay for a few years. Now, this is an economic disaster. As you have a slowdown potentially in the economy, you're going to take money away from people and not have them spend the money on a restaurant or buying a car or paying rent. I mean, it's going to push us further possibly into a recession. It's a political disaster because you're going to have Trump who stop these payments in COVID, and you're going to say these payments now resume under binding even when the loans haven't been forgiven. And it's a moral disaster. If someone who took out $150,000 of student loans, and had to go in my 20s a year or two for forbearance because I couldn't afford them.

I know what a burden this is. I did well. I was in Silicon Valley. I got lucky and fortunate in life. But this is crippling for many people who never get out of that cycle. So the president, I've said the president, we should have never agreed to the terms of the debt ceiling deal that froze the ability under certain provisions to pause, keep the pause on the student loan repayment.

But there are other authorities he has, the higher education. Act that he can involve that says we're going to continue the pause on paying back student loans until we make good on the promise to forgive them. What would your plan be, irrespective of what the White House ultimately decides to do? I would forgive up to $50,000 of loans for folks making under a certain amount, under $150,000 to $100,000, working class, middle class folks who really need the help. and I would invoke the Higher Education Act to do it, and I would make sure that there was at the very least a pause

on the repayments for those individuals while it was being litigated in the courts. Yeah, and I would argue for those people who say, well, we don't have the funding to do that, refer to the first half of this interview where we talked about how much wasteful spending is happening in the military right now. I knew there was a connection, but that's absolutely right.

I mean, that's absolutely right. And these young people, when they have certain laws, Don't you want them to be able to start a business, to be able to be productive, to be able to start a family, to be able to have a house. That's the American dream. And the other point is a lot of these folks, their credit is being destroyed. It's not just, some of them aren't paying it, but you're destroying the credit of the entire generation. Brian, here's a simple point. What other country in the world makes people go into tens of thousands of dollars of debt to get an education? I don't know a single developed country that does that.

Yeah. Well, and I would argue too, even if you're not moved by the whole empathetic argument in all of this, there is still the financial or economic argument, which is that if more people are allowed to participate in the economy or capable of participate in the economy by virtue of all of this crippling student loan debt by these predatory lenders with these insane loan rates, if they're all able to participate in the economy, like you said, they can start businesses, they can buy stuff, they can spend money at local restaurants and buy clothing and get. go on vacations and just pour money into the economy, and that helps everybody. That, like, this is the one instance where a rising tide lifts all ships. And so even again, if you're not moved by this idea that, okay, you took out a loan and now you have to pay it back, no questions asked,

at least recognize the benefit for everyone by virtue of allowing an entire generation of people to once again participate in the economy. Absolutely correct, and especially when you have a potential slowing down on the economy because Powell keeps raising the interest rates. And every few months, the economy say we're going to go into recession, recession, because conventional economic theory says if you raise rates, it would cause a recession.

Why haven't we gone into a recession? It's because the Congress provided funding through the American Rescue Plan and other programs, which put money back in the pockets of working class and middle class folks, and they've had money to spend, and consumer spending has been robust. One of the reasons consumer spending has been robust is because a whole generation that has been crippled by student loans has not had to pay back those loans. And they've been able to use that money on rent, on going out to eat, on groceries. And at a time where you have an affordability crisis, you're going to tell that generation,

now you've got to start paying $700,000 every month back on student loans. It's not just going to hurt them. It's going to slow down this economy. It makes no sense to do it at a time where interest rates are as high as they are when we're trying to avoid a recession. Yeah, and I think, you know, this is our ongoing effort to prove that this, this whole idea of trickle-down economics does not work and in every instance where we have inserted money into the economy to help after these recessions like for example with the american

rescue plan look how fast our recovery was versus when we had previous um uh recoveries where we focused on austerity or we focused on not so i think you know we're living in an example this is this is a living breathing embodiment right now of what happens when we uh move to help you know the the lower class and middle class as opposed to this debunk theory of trickle-down on economics. So with that said, Congressman, thank you so much for taking the time. I appreciate it. Thank you for breaking these issues down, Brian. Thanks again to Roe. All right, 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.