Pod Save America - 2020: Eric Swalwell on gun control and being bold

Episode Date: May 10, 2019

Tommy talks with Congressman Eric Swalwell about gun control, what it means to be bold in his campaign, his work on the intelligence committee and how he plans to win over his Trump-supporting family.

Welcome to Pod Save America. This is Tommy Vitor and welcome to the latest candidate profile. As you know, we are trying to talk to all of the candidates running for president in the Democratic primary in 2020. And today, I sat down with Congressman Eric Swalwell. We started the conversation by talking about his ideas to get guns off the streets because he has made gun control really the focus of his campaign. We also dove into the roiling debate in Congress and on Pod Save America about impeachment and the reasons for or against. We talk a lot about his work on the House Intelligence Committee, what challenges he sees in the world that worry him. We talked about Iran. We talked about China.

We talked about a whole bunch of top, top, top secret documents getting leaked out of the NSA and the CIA and how the hell that keeps happening. And what rules of the road, if any, he thinks should be put in place to, you know, limit cyber activities and cyber espionage. We also talked about his likelihood or not to win votes from his parents and his brothers who are Trump supporters and what he's learned from talking with them and basically why he thinks he's the best candidate to do this. So I really appreciate the time. There was a lot of Pod Save the World moments in there. So download, rate, review, subscribe, Pod Save the World. Quick plug for myself. I'm not going to do it now, Michael. When am I going to plug my own show but without further ado here is congressman eric swalwell i'm honored to have in the studio and crooked media hq congressman eric swalwell

california's 15th district and a candidate for president United States. Welcome. Yeah, thanks for having me on the show. Did you get enough doodle time on your way in? Do you see any of the dogs? I did not see any of the dogs, but we have a black lab who would just absolutely really fit in around here. Yeah. What? How? How big? About 70 pounds. Her name's Penny. And, you know, we got her and it was just kind of the typical, get a dog, get engaged, get married, have have kids and now like when someone asks for a picture of your dog you're like oh shit i haven't taken a picture of my dog in two years this is the ghost of christmas future we we're still on the dog uh and there are 7 000

photos of luca if you ever want to see one but we have bear back at home with my mom who's a 90 pound black lab who likes to sit on your lap. So make some of them your favorites just so you can have them like right at the top when people ask. This is good advice, but I digress. Um, hard pivot here. Uh, you said the focus of your campaign is gun control. Uh, so, I mean, you've called for a mandatory federal buyback and ban of semi-automatic weapons like the AR-15. There was a shooting at a school this week. I actually don't know what weapon was used. But regardless, I think your policy is bold. I think it's the right approach. But I'm also ground down by how difficult it's been in my experience, even modest gun control policies like mandatory background checks through Congress.

How do you think that as president, you can build a movement and get this done? Well, it's taking advantage of the momentum that has shifted in this debate and not negotiating down. After Sandy Hook, during my congressional orientation, that happened. We sought background checks. Republicans wouldn't go for that. After Orlando, crazy idea that if you're on the terrorist watch list, maybe you shouldn't be able to buy a gun. They wouldn't go for that. After Vegas, guy took a semi-automatic rifle, converted it into a fully automatic rifle. And we just said, hey, let's ban bump stocks. And they wouldn't go for that. Then Parkland changed. I think the dialogue in the country started to change when you saw, again, kids slaughtered in their schools and the moms and the Brady group and the Giffords group

and every town have started to converge. And I think there's this gun safety majority now that is, you know, more powerful and more of them than a very vocal tweeting, bullying minority that wants us to do nothing. So it's really just seizing the opportunity and doing something. But what if those vocal tweeting bullies make up a huge percentage of the Senate? What do we do about them? Beat them. You've got to beat them. Yeah.

And there's opportunities now, right? Arizona, Maine, those are two of the top targets. Colorado coming up. You've got to beat them. Or, you know, also the senators, I think, should be pushing to pass the background check bill there. You know, we worked our asses off to win the house, right? We beat 17 NRA endorsed candidates to pass background checks. We got people like Lucy McBath in Georgia who lost her son and was one of the leaders, you know, on the judiciary committee with me and others to pass it. Now we should at least be forcing them

to have a vote, you know, whether it's filib it's filibustering or what have you in the Senate to get a vote there. But it's really just building on that momentum or making Cory Gardner explain to his constituents in Colorado where they just had a shooting, why he isn't pushing for background checks. Senator Kamala Harris of California said that she would sign an executive order mandating background checks for firearms dealers who sell more than five guns a year. She wants to close a loophole that allows some domestic abusers to buy guns. Do you support those policies and do you think we can accomplish those things with executive actions? Well, I do think gun violence is a national crisis right now. What I would hope to do as nominee would be to support Senate candidates who could win and give us a governing majority in the House and the Senate.

So you have the force of the Article 1 and an executive passing these laws. That is ideal. But I will do anything it takes to prevent more and more loss in our communities. But in that spirit of negotiating up, not just background checks, I believe that just as Australia did and just as New Zealand has done, that we can take assault rifles out of our communities by banning them and buying them back. And I'm the only candidate right now that's calling for a mandatory buyback. And it's not because I don't value the Second Amendment. I say, keep your pistols,

your long rifles, your shotguns. But these weapons I saw when I was a prosecutor are just different. They leave no chance. And even if they are a smaller percentage of the deaths in America from assault rifles, it's 100% of the fear that a student has in their classroom is that they're going to be victim of an assault rifle. And you can't measure what that does to the psyche of a student who's sitting in fear in their class today. Would that buyback plan require congressional action and significant funding to pay for the buyback? You know, the number I put out there, yes, the number I put out there was $1,000 an assault

rifle. Essentially, it would be market rate. That's what Australia did. We're not going to get off as cheaply. They bought back about 700,000. They haven't had a mass shooting since. We have, by estimate, about 15 million assault rifles in America. Now, that does not mean 15 million people own assault rifles. And if you watch the news this week, you saw that there was a Bel Air family with thousands of rifles. A thousand guns in a house in Bel Air. What the fuck is going on? A lot of you know they collect uh a number of assault rifles and so

you're not talking about 15 million people would have to sell them back it'd be significantly less but again the part of the problem here is we don't even know who owns them because there's no federal you know gun registry like we have a you know we have information about you know when you get a driver license we know who has a driver license, who does not. We don't know who owns a gun in America right now. Yeah. So Cory Booker talked about proposing that all gun owners be licensed by the federal government. Do you think that makes sense?

Yeah, I do. Yep. And I support that. So your campaign mantra has been go big, be bold, do good. So besides the gun control policies we just talked about, what do you think the boldest thing you put forward is or the biggest idea you'd want to implement as president? Yeah, so I hope people see that boldness on gun safety can also be projected on education, on health care, on even governing. So, for example, on health care, like we're going to have a coverage debate. On healthcare, we're going to have a coverage debate.

I mean, absolutely, we have to get away from this free market coverage plan where more and more paychecks are being eaten up by prescription drug costs or premiums. And as a father of two kids under two, you become a healthcare expert when you're in and out of the ER. And I know not to call my wife after she's been fighting an insurance company all afternoon. So we live it. Stay off WebMD. Yeah, yeah, exactly. That never ends well for me. That's right. And you're like at the doctor's office.

You're like, I know what this is, sir. They're like, no, you're fine. So I hope the debate also, and the boldness that I would offer would be cures in our lifetime. I see this generation that is very collaborative and inventive in the private sector, but have lost faith that government could be a partner as it battles disease and wants to believe that we can invest in genomics research, targeted therapies, data sharing, and using innovation as a way to bring down the cost. I'll give you an example. A friend of mine, Brian Wallach, I don't know if you know him or not. Brian worked on the Obama campaign, was a federal prosecutor. Last year, he called me and told me he has ALS. He's 38, two beautiful girls. And he represents a generation that is going to do this on his own. He started a foundation to take the fight to ALS and find research. But he also wants to believe that his government can be a partner and also invest in cures.

And I want to be a leader for the ALS patient, the Parkinson's patient, the Alzheimer's patient, to believe that their government is up to the job and that we're going to challenge the country to invest and find cures. Yes, Brian is doing heroic work. And anyone who wants to support that work should check out i am als.org because uh he inspired all of us who worked with him and um you know it could be anybody yeah but we're living through this like go fund me generation where yeah the hope is someone reads your story clicks a link and gives you a chance and i just think the government should be someone you can count on i agree um so there's some other ideas that have been proposed by other folks that

some would call bold, others would call unrealistic. I'm curious what you think about Medicare for all, debt-free college, legalizing marijuana. Are those things you're interested in talking about? Yeah, Medicare for anyone who wants it. So for me, it's a public option, recognizing that we're such a large country that, you know, in some places, you know, say you have a large steelworking population, or you have, you know, a lot of electricians, you know, in a community, or, you know, a lot of people who have the union plan, and they want to keep their union plan, because that's what's most affordable for them. I want them to be able to keep it. I just think the government has a bigger responsibility to invest in a public option. So Medicare for

anyone who wants it, that that would bring down the costs for private insurers, but also that in a public option, we would be able to negotiate for the costs of prescription drugs, that we could import prescription drugs if we could make them safe and also make sure that any of the manufacturers could be held liable if something goes wrong. But yeah, no, I mean, that, that to me is doable. We almost did that, as you know, you know, when President Obama was in office, but the Senate, you know, had, you know, obviously there were other ideas on education. You know, I'm the first in my family to go to college, came with a cost and paying off just under a hundred thousand dollars now in student debt. And I see

this generation that is deferring the dreams of buying their first home, taking a good idea and starting a business or starting a family. It's like a first date conversation now, how much student debt do you have? Yeah, that's like a Tinder category now. And so what I want to do is put more money in more pockets to realize those dreams. I think you can do two things that actually can get passed and it's bipartisan. One would be to bring the interest rate to zero so that the government's not making $1.6 billion a year on student loans. Two would be to allow employers to contribute tax-free to their employees student loan debt, just like a 401k contribution. That's

an incentive for the employer to do that. When it comes to college, this free college debate, I support free community college. But for a four-year university, our college bargain is, if you work through college, you do work study, you work and you learn, and when you come out and take your first job, if you do community service hours for people or communities that need it, that adds up to a debt-free education. So you work for college, college works for you. And I think it just represents that, you know, in the end, nothing is truly free. But if you're giving back to a community, that that adds up to a debt-free university, a debt-free college. And I think I could pass that in the House. And I'll just tell you, Tommy, the challenge I've seen being someone who went to Congress when I was 31 was that, one, over half

the Congress is made up of millionaires. And two, most of those folks, most of the people in Congress went to college at a time when it was affordable. So they're completely or doubly disconnected from the problem because their kids aren't taking on student debt or they went to college at a time when it was affordable. So they just don't see this issue. Now we have now, and I've led a group called Future Forum in the Congress for the last five years. We have over 50 members on the Democratic side and our 40s and under. A large chunk of us have student loan debt. So I think this issue is just ripe for action. Were you one of those members who had to sleep in your office and cut corners? It cost me a lot to rent, but I was not so shameless to do that. No, I don't think anyone should sleep in a government building. It's just weird. It's just weird. Yeah, it's not ideal. I guess you have staff, you have people trying to get in and out and do their jobs. It's bad for

your mental health too. Get the hell out of the office. Yeah. Yeah. That's good advice. Speaking of Congress, the president of the United States has been giving Congress the finger repeatedly recently. This morning, this is Thursday. Speaker Pelosi declared that we're in a constitutional crisis. She echoing Congressman Nadler. Congressman Schiff subpoenaed the Fulmuller report and related evidence. It sounds like the House is about to hold Attorney General Bill Barr in contempt. How do you think Democrats can fight back against this obstinance and this utter

refusal to put up people like Don McGahn or others to provide testimony? Yeah. I think the best way out, you know, is through like you just have to meet them with force and consequence. Like we, we can't be on our heels with them because that's where they want us. And so, you know, I, I start with, you know, the president's own words. He said, he's not going to cooperate at all. Okay. Take him at his word, start showing that there's consequences for this behavior. I think Barr should be impeached. You know, we held him in contempt yesterday. That'll come to the full House in probably two weeks.

But, you know, this report is not about red jerseys versus blue jerseys. It's about a country that attacked us. It lays out the contacts between the president's team and this country. And if he's not willing to be a part of letting us see what that country did and how we can defend our country, then he's got to be removed and show that there's consequences for lawlessness. I think Steve Mnuchin is probably on the same track. The law is pretty clear. You have to turn over the tax returns. He's not going to do that. Okay. Hold him in contempt. Seek to impeach him. And I don't care what the Senate's going to do. We

should send it over to them anyway and let them deal with it and let them explain to their constituents why they think this person doesn't have to follow the law. But again, pardon all the parenting metaphors, but I've got a two-year-old right now who loves to just throw his toys all the time. So I'm doing the one, two, three method. My wife is really, it's harder for her to do it because he's so cute. But I count to three. If he's still throwing stuff, I take a toy, put it on the fridge. And like, if I don't do that, he's not going to get better. He's going to get worse.

And his little sister, the six month old, is going to see that and she's going to be bad. And so I think, one, I want to stop the president from getting worse. Two, I don't want future presidents to look at what this Congress did and say, oh, well, I can conduct myself at that low standard because President Trump got away with it. And even a majority of Democrats in the Congress let him get away with it. So you have to think about, you know, present and future. And that means force and consequence.

So we've had a spirited debate here on Pod Save America over whether, not really whether impeachment is the right thing to do, because I think that 10, 11 counts of obstruction of justice make clear that, you know, those are pretty impeachable offenses and probably should be impeached. But whether it's a politically advantageous thing to do for Democrats. So if we move to impeachment, do you think that would help force Trump's hand in terms of allowing people to testify and enforcing him to turn over documents? I don't know if it would help force Trump's hand. I think there are people who don't want to be a part of that. And that's why I think Bill Barr, you know, he needs a wake up call. He's broken the law. He thinks he can get away with it.

But I think he's actually a serious lawyer. And if we started to move on impeachment of Bill Barr, I think it might give him pause. And I think you might get him to do what you want him to do, or he would resign or be fired by President Trump. But I think you have to start sending messages to these underlings that we're not going to let them get away with it and see if that shakes them up a little bit to either comply or let Trump fire them. But with the president, I honestly, I don't know. I couldn't tell you if it's politically advantageous for us to move on impeachment with him or not. I don't think we should think about it that way. And I also think

that it's a chicken and the egg problem because if you don't hold him accountable and you just go on what the public opinion is right now, you may think, well, it's not popular. But if you did hold him accountable and the public saw through hearings and testimony, all the stuff he's done, all the laws he's broken, you may see the public dramatically change as far as what they think about it. So if you think about it just politically, I think you're getting it wrong. Sure. But so there are sort of two options, right? You can impeach or not impeach. If you don't impeach, you know, we think we should have been able to hold a series of hearings to bring to life the Mueller report, to get more testimony, to have people testify on camera under oath, but he's blocking all those efforts. If you begin impeachment proceedings, do you think that makes it easier to

compel those individuals to come forward? I think he will still try and block them. I mean, and again, what's so crazy about this and so maddening is the guy claims he's 100% exonerated. He's 100% blocking, right? No, I think he still figures that he can just try and stand on these privileges he's going to assert tied up in the courts. He seems to know, it's funny, he doesn't know much about civics, but do you remember when he was talking about, you know, I'm going to do this, they're going to sue me here, it's going to get overturned, it's going to go here.

Like he knows the judicial system. He does. He's been in it a lot. So he knows that like he could probably, you know, try and drag this on for a little while and maybe run out the clock. But I just think we're left with really no options. So that means you think we should- I think we're on the road to impeachment. I'm willing to exhaust these final remedies,

but I think that's where we're going and it's unavoidable. It's not a road any of us really wanted to go down, but I mean, he's taking us there. You're on the intelligence committee. You get top secret briefings all the time on, on various intelligence programs, on countries, on issues. Are there things you hear or areas you've been briefed on that were you the most that you'd want to focus on as president? Yes. I mean, certainly one, I want to make I want to make sure that we put a hard stop to what Russia is doing. And that means not just in the United States, but just trying to really undermine democracies around the globe. And the only way to do that is one, to stand strong with NATO, continue to see NATO grow and counter what Russia's doing in the region.

I will say this. I first thought, like most people did when Russia did this, that they were doing it to get a transactional benefit, to put a guy in place who would reduce sanctions, pull us out of Syria, diminish the role of NATO. And they certainly, that was part of the collateral benefit. But the real reason that I've come to learn, just seeing in the classified and unclassified briefings what Russia's done, they're doing this so that Russians don't ask for democracy. Because they want Russians to look at our democracy and think, well, that's a shit show. We've turned them against each other. They have a point. Yeah. In the last couple of years, yeah, they have a point. So the best way to beat this idea

that no matter who you are, where you're from, what your parents did, who you love, who you worship, if you work hard, you can become anything. Because if that idea could be true in America, it could be true anywhere. The best way to beat that idea from coming to Russia is to beat it at its origin. And so what they did was they, you know, used our freedom of speech. They weaponized social media. They've turned us against ourselves. They have us questioning just exactly what they did to help the person who won. And so Russians, you know, in Moscow are not going to say, we don't want that. And then when we call them out, you know, on the world stage, you know, for human rights violations or encroaching into, stage for human rights violations are encroaching into Ukraine, we have less standing because we've got a mess at home. So that's why they did it. And I think you need a president who understands that,

can counter that. What's so frustrating for me, I think 10 years from now, we're going to look at this. The Mueller report came out last month, laid out 200 pages of Russian contacts and that Russia attacked us. And our president called the fucking guy who attacked us. I mean, that, I mean, that is just insane to me. Like he, at the president's request, it wasn't like Putin's called five times, sir. You got to call him back. No, he requested to call Putin, talk to him for 90 minutes and

describe the call as Putin was smiling. And then he was asked, well, did you tell Putin not to do this again? And he said, no, no, that didn't come up. Like, what, you didn't have time for it to come up? It was a 90 minute call. And that's, that's where our president is. I think people, you know, as this passes are just going to say, that is nutty. That is absolutely nutty that the President of the United States, the way he defended his country when this report came out, was he called the guy and described the conversation as Putin was smiling. Yeah, it was also not a video conference for them at home. Was it a FaceTime? Yeah. Who knows how they talk. Your analysis of why the Russians did that, it makes perfect sense to me. It's something I've heard from other Russia experts.

It's particularly worrisome when you see an adversary cutting down the idea of democracy. And then the next week, the White House invites someone like Viktor Orban, who's probably done more to unravel democracy in Europe than anyone in the last decade, for an Oval Office meeting. I mean, when you hear about things like that happening, how do you respond? That this president would rather be an authoritative leader than

rule in a democracy. Michael Cohen pulled me aside when he testified a couple months ago to the Intelligence Committee. We're both walking back into the SCIF, the Secured Compartmentalized Information Facility that we meet in, right? There's no phones, no cameras. You go into this facility and we had a bathroom break and he and I just happened to walk in at the same time. And he said to me, he said, you know, what really worries me about this guy is that he won't leave office, that he's not going to accept the result of an election. And, you know, that is a guy that has worked as a fixer, knows him best. And Cohen said,

he said, this guy wants to be a dictator. And he said, that's why he likes Kim. That's why he likes Erdogan. That's why he likes Putin. And that really worries me. Do you think that's why Speaker Pelosi echoed that sentiment recently? Yeah.

And it's because just as Trump is setting up the, well, the elections may be rigged, right? He did that in 16. He did that a little bit in 18. I think you're going to see him start to do that again. I think we have to seed for the American people what this guy's instincts really are so that they're prepared if he tries to do it. I mean, it wasn't a coincidence that, you know, Jerry Falwell Jr.

a couple of days ago tweets, Donald Trump is owed two more years of his presidency because of the Russia investigation. The president retweets it and then starts to say almost the same thing. I mean, I think, you know, he would love to try and do that. And so we just have, we can't be on our heels this time. Like we need to make sure that under no circumstances is that even discussed. And yes, she's right. Overwhelm the ballot box to make sure that you can't deny the result. But your other question, I just want to say, countering China economically is going to be one of the biggest challenges also for the next president. You know, they're an economic force. They don't really respect intellectual property. We see that, you know, through economic espionage.

We see that, you know, through intellectual property theft. They continue to, you know, again, as we're dealing with democracy challenges at home, you know, they continue to grow, you know, and expand their military presence in the South China Seas. And I think the best way to take them on is not to go one-on-one as this president has done. I think he's correct. And I will give him credit that China, especially when it comes to trade, is a bad actor. But if you think about this like a lawsuit, like when the little guy gets screwed by the big guy, and right now we're getting, when it comes to trade, like the trade deficit is so big between China, we can't really take them on tit for tat.

But there are a lot of other countries who are victims of China's trade. So you form a class action. You form a class and go at China with Australia, with Japan, with South Korea. Like TPP was supposed to do, basically. Yeah, I mean, with better labor standards in Vietnam and some of the environmental but you i did get to form a class and and he is alienated he's insulted the australian you know uh leader he has told the japanese and the south koreans that they should get their own nuclear weapons or pay us more for our presence there so i do i do see you know countering china uh is a challenge yeah uh man telling, telling the Japanese and South Koreans to get nuclear weapons is just one of those crazy, just unbelievably insane things he says on a regular basis that just doesn't even get really covered.

Yeah. And I don't think he understands why, like, if we could have double the troop presence over there, like, that's a good thing for us to have a window into China. Look at what's going on in North Korea. Like, they are good partners for us to have a window into China, look at what's going on in North Korea. Like they are good partners for us. Yeah. There's a lot of concern about the Russians. You know, the analysis you just walked us through, they probably look at the impact of their interference

and think that was unbelievably effective. This worked out well for us. Maybe they'll do it again. Or maybe the Chinese will do it. There's been a lot, you know, I guess the question is what has been done to protect the integrity of our election systems that you've seen and what, in your opinion, still needs to be done? I think the most important thing we can do is have awareness as American people of how our social media platforms have been weaponized. And I think that sadly comes from the top. Like you need a president to unite the country, explain what they did, challenge social media companies to not let this happen on our platforms. so that when we see these types of divisive posts coming from foreign intelligence services,

we recognize it and we dismiss it and it doesn't come into our political ether. That takes leadership from a president. Right now, even with the majority in the House, it's going to be hard to lead that dialogue if the president isn't acknowledging what they did. So we can fund election security. He defunded, the Republicans defunded the $350 million that had gone to election security and was supposed to go to it in the last cycle. We can put that back in place as we go into this budget battle in September. I've written legislation called duty to report. Senator Blumenthal and I have introduced it. It would

require any candidate, campaign, family member, if you're approached with dirt on your opponent by a foreign agent, you have to tell the FBI. About to introduce legislation, same thing for social media companies. If you see foreign interference on your platform, you have to tell the FBI. So that we see it and that they have a responsibility not to take, or if they are taking money in rubles, as we saw last time, that the FBI knows about it and can counter it. But I really think it's awareness more than anything. The hardest part about this is biting your tongue and not talking about it too much. Because Republicans would love for us to say that the Russians might influence the next election.

Because they want that single mom who's picking up her little girl from daycare, has to get her bathed, has to get her fed on election day to think, you know what? I can go to the polls, wait for a half hour, but if the results are going to be rigged, why does it matter? So they would love for us to scream about the voting, the ballot box not being secure. So we have to be careful on how you talk about it. Agreed. This morning, Chris Hughes, one of the original co-founders of Facebook wrote, quote, the government needs to do two things, break up Facebook's monopoly and regulate the company to make it more accountable to the American people. Just breaking up Facebook is not enough. We need a new agency empowered by Congress to regulate tech companies. Its first

mandate should be to protect privacy. Do you agree with those proposals? I think we need a national privacy law, like the endeavor that Europe just underwent and now has different disclosures that are made to consumers. And if any of your listeners go to any European website or any website that goes through a European server, you have to opt in as to how, you know, your information is being used. I think we can do that in the United States. I also think we need a federal breach notification law right now. There's, you know, 49 different breach notification laws, you know, in our country. And so when you have like the Equifax breach or the Target breach, I think we should have one standard, you know, so what we know. But the challenge here, I really believe is, you know, our laws around, our antitrust laws were largely written around whether monopolies were causing the price of goods to go up. Um, so it's really about how do you value data and, you know, what are we giving up

as far as our data? Because Google and Facebook are free, but we're giving up a lot, you know, as far as the data they have on us. And second, you know, they are gobbling up, you know, their competitors and their questions about whether they are using, you know, the data they have to gobble up their competitors. I think the best example is with like Amazon, Like, you know, there's fair questions about if, you know, like diapers.com, which was on Amazon and my, you know, we buy a lot of diapers in our household. If Amazon is using the data of people who buy diapers, if people were going on Amazon and buying diapers from diapers.com and Amazon

is using that data and then they manufacture their own diapers and sell their own diapers based on the data that they were getting from people buying from diapers.com. Like that may not technically violate our laws, but like it raises the question, like, do we need to rethink like how data is used? You know, so you're not putting businesses, you know, out. Agreed. Quick foreign policy grab bag here. I mean, not quick necessarily, but on Iran. So Trump recently deployed an aircraft carrier and a bomber task force to the Middle East, reportedly in response to some intelligence passed to us by the Israelis about threats from Iran. Have you seen that intelligence? And do you think that the response was proportional or appropriate?

intelligence? And do you think that the response was proportional or appropriate? Well, what I can say is that I think the president is being unnecessarily provocative with Iran. I think Congress should demand that every person in Congress gets briefed on this, and that we very carefully set limits as to what this president can do because I see this in just a few steps leading us into a war in the Middle East. And I think the president is spoiling for a war with Iran. I mean, he pulled us out of the Iran nuclear deal,, you know, other countries and companies for doing business with Iran, which is going to reduce money flowing into Iran. And I think it's really spoiling for a fight and trying to almost provoke Iran to do something so we can take a strike. Now, all of that said, Iran is a really bad actor. They fund, you know, terrorism in the Middle East.

They're constantly targeting our ally in Israel. They have a ballistic missiles program that is not in compliance with any weapons treaty. They need to be punished. That's why I supported the Iran nuclear deal. I thought the best way to deal with a country that funded terrorism and had ballistic missiles was to take away their ability to have a nuclear weapon. We took them from three months to a year. Now they're saying that they're not going to follow all parts of the agreement. We're not going to be able to, you know, monitor them and verify what they're doing. And so they're going to get closer to having the nuclear weapon. And by the way, continue to do that other stuff, which is going to force us, you know, to have to do something.

I think we may have to, in Congress, set some limitations on what the president can do. That was something that, you know, Speaker Boehner and Speaker Ryan were unwilling to do, whether it was through President Obama or President Trump as it related to Syria or the authorization for use of force in Iraq and Afghanistan. And I think we need to update all of those. Agreed. In China, the Chinese have put up to 3 million members of a weaker Muslim minority group into what Trump's own assistant secretary of defense called concentration camps. It seems to me that this is a crime against humanity. And given the scale, one of the most under-discussed, under-covered, under-acted upon things I've heard of in the world today,

what do you think we can do to stop them? Yeah, it is a crime against humanity. And the president should include human rights when he discusses trade with China. And I don't want to be trading with a country that is treating millions of people like that, or at least trading with them and not bringing it up and telling them that we're watching. This is something where the United States typically would show leadership on, especially in the United Nations. But instead, you know, this president is having us pull out of, you know, human rights conventions in the United Nations.

And again, this goes back to a president who is alienating us, you know, from the world. And when I, you know, you'd mentioned earlier our mantra for the campaign, go big on the issues, be bold with solutions, do good in the way that we govern. And this is to me a part of like the doing good. Next president's going to have to go on a global affirmation tour, take the oath, catch a plane, assure our allies we're still with them, start to hold up again, you know, the principles that make us so special, you know, human rights, you know, freedom of the freedom of press, freedom of worship, you know, getting rid of the Muslim ban ourselves. But I think it's hard, you know, for us to have moral leadership and call out the Chinese for the way that they're treating ethnic and religious minorities when we have a Muslim

ban in place and we are separating women and children at our own border. Yeah. You said on the intelligence committee, as we've talked about, you guys provide oversight of the intel community. Somehow our most closely held, highly classified secrets and programs keep leaking. It started with WikiLeaks and there was Snowden. Then there were the so-called Vault 7 documents that detailed the CIA's global cyber espionage programs. It's a two-part question for you. How is it possible that this kind of material keeps getting out? And two, do you think it's time for us to develop some clear public rules of the road that put limits and guardrails around cyber activities to include what the U.S. is doing via the NSA or CIA? what the U.S. is doing via the NSA or CIA?

So one, I have supported expanding the scope of the, it's called PCLOB. It's the Public Civil Liberties Oversight Board. Is that right? Throwback. I love PCLOB. So PCLOB used to have access to classified and covert actions. Then their access to covert actions was taken away. When did that happen?

I think it was the last five years. So I want the public to have an independent authority to look at what the intelligence communities are doing, to look at any abuses. Now, some of these leaks that you talked about exposed abuses. Now, that to me is not a reason to leak, but I would rather that you have an independent watchdog group who people could go to and express concerns. And P-Club lost a lot of its ability to do that when they didn't have access to covert programs. Second, I am concerned in the intelligence community that we may be relying too much on independent contractors. And I would rather, and I get it, you know, there may be some jobs where, you know, people don't want to commit to a career with the federal government and they want to be

an independent contractor. And to get the best person to fill that skill, you need an independent contractor. But you also give up something when you don't have that fidelity to the government. And so I think we have to look at that. And then I chair the intelligence modernization subcommittee on the Intel committee. I'm very interested in getting an intelligence community that looks like America. It's not a very diverse group. The briefers come in, they're widely, and you've seen this, it's white males. And a white male briefing me on what's going on in Africa, or a white male briefing me about different Muslim terrorism groups, maybe we could get people of color or just different religious minorities to talk to us about these issues because, one, they would just culturally better understand them. And, two, it's just I think it's better for us to defend the country with people – with an intel community that looks like the country.

So diversifying the intelligence community is one of my highest priorities. I think that would also just frankly make us safer. Pivot to politics here. So your parents, and I believe your brothers are Trump supporters? My parents have a Trump-Pence magnet on the fridge. I hope that's come down since I've announced a month ago. So you're a member of Congress. You're a member of the intelligence community. You are probably better versed in the facts and arguments against Donald Trump than anyone else in the country. Are you able to sway them at all? And if not, should that depress the hell out of the rest of us? I'm still going to want to see their ballots before they mail them back.

Got it. You know, my parents, I think, are of the swayable type. They're Ronald Reagan Republicans. They like someone who's tough and represents America well. They like that Reagan stood up to the Russians. They like someone who keeps their taxes low and doesn't waste their money. They always would tell me, oh, Democrats, you guys just want to tax and spend all of our money. So I think one, a president who recognizes the strength that we have in the world is with our alliances. And that means fewer wars and less dollars we have to spend on defense at home. And two, calls out this president for the deficit spending, especially in his tax cuts and the debt that's racking up. I think you can appeal to a lot of

Republicans if you offer a vision that will keep us safe in the world, but also be more prudent with the taxpayer's dollar than this president is being. We're not going to get all of them. I'm realistic about that. But I go on Fox News a lot to make my case. I mean, it is probably the only way my parents could see me on TV, but I don't want to dismiss people who were counting on someone who said he was going to raise their wages, lower their health care costs, and brighten their kids' future. But I do want to dismiss the guy that's utterly failed to do that. And I've seen the payoff of that. I've seen people who probably will never vote for me but come up to me and say, hey, I respect that you go on there. And I think that's the first step is just, hey, I respect that you go on there. And I think

that's the first step is just getting like a mutual respect with some of their viewers. Second, the people who come up to me and say, hey, I'm not a Republican. I watch you on Fox News, but my husband is a Republican and that's all he watches. So I have to watch it. I'm getting that person. I'm connecting with that person or the bartender who doesn't have a choice in what's on the TV and Fox News is on. So I think going into some of these uncomfortable places serves us well. And it doesn't mean I have to sign up to agree at all with some of the crazy views of the hosts, but I don't want to dismiss the viewers. Are you seeing any indication that those people are peeling off? Because I do feel like there has to be a lot of people who feel like that tax cut didn't help me at all, who are worried about their health care premiums going up, who feel like a lot of the promises are being broken. But I'm never seeing his approval break through a floor of 39%, 40%.

So I have a theory on that my theory is that his approval may stay the same or slightly go up but the number of people who are republicans is probably going down so um and and i actually call me crazy but i think we've already done the hard work i think the hard work was the midterms like if we had not won the midterms we would be fucked yeah we would be in real real trouble the hard work was winning the midterms. Like if we had not won the midterms, we would be fucked. We would be in real trouble. The hard work was winning the midterms. And if you just look at where we won, right, we added two seats in Iowa, almost won a third in Western Iowa where I was born. We added a seat in Oklahoma. We added a seat in Kansas, almost added a second seat in Kansas, added two seats in Texas. And then statewide, we won Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania.

Those are the three states we need. So when I think about the next two years, like Donald Trump's not going to get better. Like he's not going to fulfill the promises that have already been broken. He had two years with a Republican governing majority and he failed to pass the health care repeal, right? He tried to build a wall and it shut down the government and he passed a tax cut that added to the deficit and saw his majority wiped out. So things aren't going to get easier or better for Donald Trump. So I actually think the sun's beginning to rise. We just haven't really noticed it yet because we're still just weathering the day-to-day drama of president Trump. But I think the hard work was done in the midterms. And a lot of them were

those Republicans you're talking about, who I think came, came over and they're going to do it again. And those sort of moderate districts, um, you have talked about, uh, the importance of representation and knowing when you can speak to someone else's experience and you cannot, you've also talked about, uh, how you would ask a woman to be your vice president. So I asked this in the least trolly way possible, but like some might argue that the most, you know, sincere form of promoting representation and equal rights would be to say, support one of the great women running for office. How do you respond to that criticism? You know what? I may end up, you know, at that point and I look forward to doing that. I happen to believe that, you know, I have an experience of being the first in the family to go to college, seeing why my parents

worked really hard, and what they expected it to add up to. And that when you go on a journey like that, and you have your eyes open, you see all the other people who work hard, and they're not benefiting from a good economy or a good stock market, they're just running in place. And so I feel a responsibility to fight for them. I'm still generationally optimistic that we could solve a lot of these problems. And I bring experience of being in Congress for seven years and on the Intelligence Committee to know who our enemies are. And I think that's a combination that can make sure that this country is one where if you work hard, it adds up. It's one where we can defend ourselves against the enemies that are attacking us. And I'm not going to be able to speak to everyone's experience.

But as I said, I know where to look. I see other identities. And I would put together a diverse cabinet to lead the country. And I would ask a woman to be vice president. And if my candidacy does not develop out the way I hope it does, then yes, there are plenty of women who would make great presidents that we have on the debate stage. Last question for you. What I think is particularly interesting and stark about your candidacy versus some of the others is a generational gap that is wide. And you've talked about how you still have student loan debt.

You're not 40, you're 38, we're the same age. Do you think it's time for some of the leaders in the Democratic Party who are from that previous generation to move aside and let younger politicians get a shot? Well, I think when you think about that, when you think about that debate stage, who's going to be standing next to Donald Trump? We want our candidates' ideas to be fresher than his. I think that's really, really important is that our candidate is one of new ideas, new energy, and offers new leadership. I think you're going to need that contrast. Now, that's a mindset. I don't think that's a specific age or era. I think it's a mindset.

But that means you have to understand automation and what it's doing to the workforce and the anxiety it's causing. It means that you have to understand this generation that's in student debt. It means you have to understand how scared kids are in their classroom today because they don't think anything's being done about gun violence. If you have that mindset, then you can have that contrast with the president. But if the president has the freshest ideas on the debate stage, he's going to be reelected. Yeah. Yeah. Congressman Swalwell, thank you so much for coming by. It's great talking to you..