Pod Save America - 2020: Kirsten Gillibrand on Medicare for All and speaking truths (From Jan. 22)

Episode Date: April 22, 2019

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand sits down with Jon Favreau to talk about Medicare for All, building a green economy, immigration, and more. (Previously released on January 22, 2019)

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. We are re-releasing as a standalone podcast the interview I did with New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, who's running for the Democratic nomination for president. We had a fantastic conversation. We talked about what she would do as president. We talked about health care. We talked about her record as a senator and congresswoman from New York. It's a great chat. Check it out. Here it is. Here it is. On the pod today, we have right here in studio, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand. Hello. Presidential candidate.

Yes. Thanks for coming by. I'm delighted to be here. Congrats on the announcement. Thank you. Congrats on a great first trip to Iowa. It was amazing. I had more fun than you can possibly imagine. Yes.

Yeah. It was amazing. I had more fun than you can possibly imagine. Yes. Yeah. It was great. I love Iowa. So I'm always fascinated by the process of making a decision as momentous as running for president. When did you first seriously consider running? And why did you ultimately decide that this particular moment in history was the right moment for you to run? Well, I've been feeling very called at this moment to do what is necessary to right the ship. I really believe in right versus wrong. And up until the last election, wrong was winning.

And I have been feeling that I need to fight for this country, for families, for children as hard as I would fight for my own children. And it's why I believe we have to fight for the causes that so many of us have been fighting for. Health care is a right, better public schools, making sure people can earn their way into the middle class and live the American dream. But I think it's going to take a kind of conviction and a courage that understands we have to take on the status quo in a way that perhaps we never have. Because Washington's run on corruption and special interests. Every legislation gets written in the dead of night. And someone's making it sure that the corporate interests and the corporate greed is constantly protected.

And that's what I feel I really have to challenge, because you're never going to get any of that stuff done if you're unwilling to. And so over the last couple of months, I really wanted to spend time with my family to talk to them personally. Is this a sacrifice you're willing to make? Are we willing as a family to do everything we can to change what's happening in this country and restore, in my mind, what's been lost? And we just need time together to really think about it and understand. I mean, I have a 10-year-old. Henry's going to give a lot to this country in the next year or two. He's used to mommy making breakfast every morning, lunch, dinner every night, picking him up from school.

How does he feel about spending weekends together? I think he was a little concerned, but he also feels called to this moment in a way that I think any parent who's listening to this will understand. President Trump's created a lot of anxiety in the world and a lot of hate and division. And I think people are feeling that this is the moment they have to do whatever it takes. And even Henry, who's 10, feels, no, mom, you might be the only one who could beat him. You should do this. My 15-year-old saying, mom, I think you should do it. He's terrible. He's doing all these terrible things around the country and the world, and you should do this. And so I just needed time with them.

So over the last few months, I made the decision to actually do this. And I just feel like all of us have to just use whatever time, talent, courage, passion we have to change what's happening. So it's shaping up to be a very crowded field. There's a lot of talent. There's a lot of field. There's a lot of talent. There's a lot of diversity. There's a lot of experience. There's also a lot of consensus around sort of a very big, bold, progressive policy agenda.

What makes you different? How do you stand out in the field of Democratic candidates? Well, we all have our own stories, of course, and I'm a mother with young kids. And what drives me to public service is that I do want to fight for other people's kids as hard as I fight for my own. And I have been working over the last 12 years in public service to bring people together to find solutions for really hard problems. And I do that by listening to all my constituents, whether they're in red parts or blue parts or purple parts in my state.

I serve all of them. And because I listen and then find common ground and build from there, I get a lot done. I passed the 9-11 health bill twice for first responders all across this country, people who ran up the towers on 9-11 when everybody else was coming down. And unfortunately, because they've been breathing in all these toxins for now, this country, people who ran up the towers on 9-11 when everybody else was coming down. And unfortunately, because they've been breathing in all these toxins for now, you know, decades, they're dying. And so I had to lift up their voices and carry their stories with the 9-11 responders knocking on doors with me, all those senators, and got it passed. I also was able to

bring people together on Don't Ask, Don't tell repeal. Even Democrats at the time and advocates at the time were saying, you can't do this. And this is not a convenient time or this isn't the right strategy. And I just was very clear that when is civil rights convenient? You have to fight for it for the right reasons because you have to fight for it because it's necessary. These are men and women who will die for this country and they're being denied the ability to serve based on who they love. And then transparency and accountability. I passed the Stock Act telling members of Congress they can't engage in insider trading. Surprise, surprise. And doing things about transparency and accountability, posting my schedule, went back when we had earmarks, my taxes online. So I get things done, and I bring people together. And last, I fight. I do not back down

from a fight, especially if it's the right fight for the right reasons. And it doesn't matter if it's hard. I will fight, especially if it's hard. And I've shown that I could do that by taking on the generals in the Pentagon over sexual harassment in the military, being willing to take on special interests on all hosts of ideas, and making sure that we do the right thing, even when it's hard, and especially when it's hard. So one of the most difficult decisions that a president makes is how to prioritize keeping all the different campaign promises made, right? So you remember this, Obama comes into office and spends much of the first two years, aside from trying to fix the financial crisis, passing the Affordable Care Act. And that meant that some big ticket priorities

like immigration reform, voting rights reform sort of took a back seat. You've proposed quite a few very big, bold progressive policies, Medicare for All, universal family leave, publicly funded elections, a federal job guarantee. Which of those do you tackle first as president? Well, the thing that I hear most about, to be perfectly honest, no matter where I've traveled over the last year for the candidates, because I was working really hard to flip the house, of course, and hold our Senate seats. And the victories in Nevada and Arizona are amazing. I talk to voters everywhere. And the number one thing still on their minds is health care. And I can't explain to you how important this is. Because if you don't have access to health care, you can't afford it, or because you're being denied because of an insurer,

you might not think you'll survive to be able to provide for your kids. You might think my child has a preexisting condition and he'll die if I can't get the treatment or the medicine that he needs. So this is an issue of life or death. So I would really like to bring people together and focus on health care as a right and not a privilege. I think Medicare for All is the right solution. I campaigned on Medicare for All in 2006 in my two-to-one Republican district, and I made it really simple for folks back then. They just said, our insurers charge us too much money, co-pays are too high, deductibles

are too high, it keeps going up. I said, well, how would you feel if you could just buy into Medicare at a percentage of your income, something like 5%? Would that be something you're interested in? And they said, of course, because they knew, number one, it creates competition because you're having a not-for-profit public option that will drive competition with the for-profit insurers. And number two, they knew Medicare is good. It covers most things, the things they want. And even after this last presidential election, I would talk to voters in upstate New York, and the thing I'd hear is, I'm angry that my neighbor earns $5,000 less than me, and he gets access to Medicaid, and I don't, and it's unfair. So folks want access to basic health care. So I would really focus on that. I would focus on education,

making sure our public schools aren't crumbling and people actually have a chance to get a good education and have a hope for a future. And I would focus on the economy, particularly jobs, making sure we can get anyone who wants to work full time, who wants to work hard, the training they need to get a job and get this country to full employment. Those are the kinds of common sense things. I think you can bring people together on those issues. So they feel like this is certainly about them and their community no matter where they live. They feel like this is certainly about them and their community no matter where they live. So it's interesting.

You referenced your 2006 campaign, and you were for a Medicare buy-in there, and Medicare is a public option that lets you buy into Medicare. You've recently signed on to Bernie Sanders' Medicare for All bill, which is much more sweeping, right? It was sort of a transition out of private insurance altogether. What made you decide that Bernie's bill was a better bet than just a Medicare buy-in, which some other senators are offering as well? So the part of Senator Sanders' bill that I got to write was the transition, which is the part that I think is really important for people to understand. It's a four-year transition where anybody can buy in at 4% of their income to

create competition in the market and let people begin to choose what works for you. I promise you, if you have a choice of paying your insurers endless amounts of money and not great coverage and actually buying into Medicare, people are going to choose that because it is affordable medicine, affordable healthcare, quality service. And I want people to look at this as something that is theirs, like an earned benefit. Because what we have with social security, it's really clear. You buy in across your lifetime at 6% of your income up to a certain amount. I would blow that cap, by the way, as a way to have more people invest into our social safety net through all incomes. And then let people buy at 4%.

So if you bought at a 4% for your earned benefit of health care, people can understand that. If you're committing 10% of your income overall to make sure that you have access to health care as a right, not a privilege, to make sure that you will not die in poverty, that you will have a safety net when you're a senior, I think that's the kind of thing that makes sense to people. And so that's the part of the bill I wrote that I really like. And that's how you get to single payer. That's how you get to true Medicare for all, because you're letting people participate in a way that makes sense to them. Are you worried at all that even with the transition period, you know, there's going to be people who say, because we know there's a lot of people in this

country who like the insurance they have, they like getting their employer-sponsored insurance. I think you've got to try. It's the only way we're going to get there because if you just keep fixing the current system, the current system's built on for-profit insurance industry. It's built on a for-profit industry that has obligations to their shareholders and they pay their CEOs millions of dollars. So if you're putting all that fat into another industry, it's not going directly to the doctors and the nurses and the hospitals that are doing the work. And so I want our money, my money, your money to go for the things we want to buy, which is better healthcare. And so I don't want my money to go to an insurance company. You don't need to have insurance to have healthcare in this country. Let's just buy into healthcare. So it's an unnecessary layer of fat that I would like

to remove. And that's why if you explain to the American people, this is going to be your earned benefit in the same way that social security is, I think they're going to vote for it. I think they're actually going to say this is something. And again, when I ran in 2006 in a two to one Republican district, this was my solution for health care. People liked it. They felt comfortable with it. And they voted for me for those reasons. Yeah. No, I've talked to Obama Trump voters who like I love Medicare for all. And you're like, you voted for Donald Trump. Well, he ran on. If you remember, we need universal health care that's cheaper and better. Well, that's Medicare for all.

Didn't really happen. And it's not going to happen because he didn't mean it. He never meant it. Do you support a Green New Deal? I do. I think the platform, there's not a lot of details yet behind the Green New Deal, but the platform of it is really exciting because it recognizes, and the way I see a green economy is this. I think we need a moonshot.

We need to tell the American people we are going to have a green economy in the next 10 years, not because it's easy, but because it's hard, because it's a measure of our innovation and effectiveness. Like that JFK moment where he says this is what we're going to do in 10 years, not because it's easy, but because it is hard. And I think if you lay out a large agenda that really transforms the economy in a lot of places, and I'll explain the places where I've been working for a long time, which are very much part of that platform. So the simple thing, jobs, you can create more economic growth if you invest in entrepreneurialism and innovation. If you actually invest in wind turbines, in solar panels, in geothermal, in hydropower, in biofuels. If you use our ability to innovate and invent, you will solve the problem of moving into a green energy economy. And by doing that, you're going to create a lot of jobs. You also can use the investment of investing in

efficiencies. So there's a school in upstate New York where they teach green energy, and it's what they do. And so the kids learn how to build a home that's LED certified. They learn how to install solar panels and wind turbines. And they learned how to do energy efficient appliances, everything. And what I was told when I toured that school, they said 98% of our graduating seniors have three or more job offers before graduation. Oh, wow. Now, that's a true statistic. That's pretty amazing.

But that's what the green economy can look like. You're just actually creating the vision for how to create a faster-growing economy. And we've made a mistake in the last 10 years because Congress always hems and haws and doesn't provide these tax benefits for innovation. We've let the tax credits elapse and expire. And so industries that would normally be investing over and over again chose not to. And you know what happened? All that innovation, all that manufacturing went to China. So now China is in a better position to innovate than America is because they took on the goal of making green energy a real part of their economy.

So make it a real part of the economy. Let me just do two more things. Yeah, no, no. Go ahead. The platform's so big. There's a lot of this stuff I've been working on for a long time. And it's very complicated. So the other part of the platform that I've been working on for the last 10 years is clean air, clean water.

Because clean air and clean water should be a right and not a privilege. It should be a right for every community. Clean air and clean water should be a right and not a privilege. It should be a right for every community. And so you take any part of this country, they have brownfield sites. They have dirty water from eras of pollution by different manufacturers. New York State, we have the largest Superfund site called the Hudson River because of PCBs. super fun site called the Hudson River because of PCBs. The county I live in in Rensselaer County has been polluted by companies that have been manufacturing with plastics. And so now we have PFOA in our water. So you need to focus on clean air and clean water as a major goal for addressing

global climate change and for addressing a green economy. Because if you don't have it, communities can't thrive or survive. It's really important. I think you should put a price on carbon. If you really want to attack global climate change effectively, you should put a price on carbon because what you're doing is you're incentivizing good behavior. You're saying, if you want to be a polluter, fair enough, but you're gonna have to pay a lot more because you're harming the rest of us and And we're gonna have to pay all those hospital bills. That's going to come to the taxpayer eventually. So you don't get the benefit of being a big polluter unless you're going to pay for it. But if you're going to be the inventor

and the innovator who's going to create the new energy efficient processes, you get the benefit. And so I love putting that price on carbon as well. Do you worry that, you know, some folks on the left have said that a carbon tax is regressive? Obviously, Macron had some problems with that in France, to say the least. There was, you know, a referendum in Washington State that Jay Inslee tried that carbon tax didn't pass. Obviously, I think everyone agrees, like on the polluter, the polluter should pay, but it sometimes goes down to... No, it doesn't. It doesn't have to be regressive. That's a different tax. That's like putting a price on gasoline. That's a different approach. Putting a price on carbon is much more about

incentivizing good behavior and disincentivizing bad behavior. It's all how you structure it, right? It's a market. Yes, it's a market. And it works. It's worked in other places. There's been places where it didn't work because of fraud and corruption, but it is using market dynamics to help you. So I think it's a good thing that we should be talking about as well. And I just believe that global climate change is one of the greatest threats to humanity. It is a life or death threat that we have to face right now. And it's been a life or death threat for a long time across this country. I mean, we lost so many lives during Superstorm Sandy and Tropical Storm Irene and Lee. It really, I mean, I met parents who lost their babies because when a mom got out of a car to get her kids to safety, the water swelled to 10 feet and literally took them out of her arms. People die, took them out of her arms. People die and you cannot turn a blind eye. And anybody who does, I don't think should be in public service because they're not making the differences that need to be made. Do you think that a federal job guarantee should be part of a

Green New Deal? It's in some of the drafts of the plan and I know you've been for a federal job guarantee separately. So I believe in full employment and I think you should get to a full employment. And the way you do that, in my mind, is you make sure that anybody who wants to be working full-time can get whatever job training it takes to get a full-time job. And we've been doing that in New York

and a couple of places effectively. And the way I think you could do it is you partner with the community colleges and the state colleges and the state schools and the apprenticeship programs and the not-for-profits that do this today, do the really good hands-on job training to get the skills you need for the job that is available. In upstate New York, one of our local manufacturers, Bombardier, needed advanced welders. And so they said, we couldn't find anybody in 500-mile radius

of our manufacturing plant. So they went to the community college and said, will you offer this coursework? We'll hire everyone. It's a $70,000-a-year job. Sure enough, it works perfectly. So now they have all the welders they need. A great not-for-profit I just toured in the Bronx

called Perscola. And it's a not-for-profit. It's fully funded. It's free training for anybody who wants to learn something in cyber or in computer technology. So they've taught young adults how to code, how to build computers, how to fix computers, how to do cybersecurity. And they've already paired 800 students directly into the employment market by giving the right job training for the jobs that are available. So my vision for full employment is making job training really

accessible and funding that because that's what our community colleges and state schools and these not-for-profits do so well. They're already doing it. So amplify their work, investing in that directly. So you know if you're underemployed or unemployed and you want a better job or higher wages, you have someplace you can go and know that there's a path for you. But should government be an employer of last resort? Sure can be, particularly public service. And that's another idea I have. So I believe that public service is life-changing for people.

I believe that if you give someone a chance to put others before themselves, it changes their hearts. It changes who they are. It changes what they care about. And I think if you told every young person in America, if you do a year of public service, we're going to give you two years of community college free. If you do two years of public service,

we'll give you four years free. For community college or state schools or any not-for-profit training program. And so I would combine that with your full employment goal so that young people can also get good training. And then encouraging them in those public service jobs, go into health care for a year. We used to have candy stripers in upstate New York. I don't know if you ever had them where you are.

But you could go work in a hospital just as an intern to just help. You could create a not-for-profit training for people in health care. Because our baby boomers are retiring, we're going to have an onslaught of Alzheimer's like you've never seen before. We don't have enough home health aides to meet that need. And so really giving young people, go into health care. Go into first responders. If you want to be a firefighter, a police officer, military, education, amplify what we're already doing in Teach for America, extend that. One of the things that Ted Kennedy did right when I was first part of the Senate was trying to create more slots for public service.

I was very excited about that bill. I think it was still only maybe 50,000, but imagine if any kid could say, I'm going to dedicate at least a year or two of my life to public service before they decide what they want to be. I think it would change everything. So I'd combine those things together to get to full employment. Okay. So at best, you as president would have a Democratic majority in the House and a narrow Senate majority. Certainly not 60 votes, right, after this election. So there are no Senate Republicans in favor of Medicare for All. Probably very few in favor of a big program like Green New Deal or something like that. As president, would you push, hopefully, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to get rid of the filibuster so you can pass

something like Medicare for All or a Green New Deal? Well, the filibuster is mostly gone now. So it barely exists. No, I think... Well, yeah, that's why I'm sort of thinking like... It barely exists. It barely exists. There's pretty much a 51 vote threshold now for everything. Right. The only part we had left in place was for Supreme Court justices, and Mitch just took that away. So I think it's useful to bring people together. And I don't mind that you have to get 60 votes for cloture because you're trying to get people to a point where—and that's a term of art for your listeners. It just means that you're done with debate. And so you will urge people to have at least 60 votes to say we're done with debate. That's not an unreasonable goal because if people don't feel like you're done with debate and that they haven't been heard enough, maybe you should debate a little more.

government only works when people who care deeply stand up and fight for what they believe in and know how important their voices are. And so if you're not able to get 60 votes on something, it just means you haven't worked hard enough talking to enough people and trying to listen to their concerns and then coming up with a solution that they can support. So I'm not afraid of it one way or the other. But you'd be open to getting rid of it for something big like Medicare for All? I don't think we should have gotten rid of it for the Supreme Court justices because they're lifetime appointments. And I do think you should be able to earn at least 60 votes. But I'll think about it. I believe I can work well under either system

because if you don't have 60 votes yet, it just means you haven't done enough advocacy and you need to work a lot harder. OK, so another potential impediment to your agenda would be a fairly conservative, fairly partisan Supreme Court. Some folks on the left are saying, you know what, after what McConnell did to Garland, after ramming through Kavanaugh, who was openly partisan at his hearings, Kavanaugh, who was openly partisan at his hearings, the next Democratic president needs to consider reforming the Supreme Court, potentially adding seats, potentially instituting term limits. What do you think of those ideas? Either of those appealing to you? Well, they're interesting ideas that I would need to think more about. But I do think what President Trump has done with the judiciary is shocking and is so destructive. I thought both Kavanaugh and Gorsuch were disqualified in my mind because of their records, because of their previous statements, because their belief that money is speech and that corporations have same free speech rights as you and I.

I think that's outrageous. I think we need to get money out of politics. I think that the special interests, the moneyed interests, the levers of power that exist in Washington are so powerful. They don't need more power. They need far less. And we need to restore a direct democracy. We need to actually put the power of this country back in the hands of the people. And so you need to undermine put the power of this country back in the hands of the people. And so you need

to undermine those special interests. And these two justices, they just want to glorify those special interests. Do you think the Supreme Court needs reform? Do you think it's broken? It does. Well, I can give you one example that I desperately believe. The fact that a Supreme Court justice can be wined and dined by a special interest, have, you know, junkets paid for where they can be lobbied incessantly by special interests, by the wealthy special interests. I think we have to make that illegal. I think it is absolutely essential that we take away the ability for them to be wined and dined. We need transparency and accountability. It's something I've been working on since I was first elected in 2006.

We need to make sure that the public knows what's happening and how it's happening. And I don't think we should have a system where legislation is written in the dead of night by the most powerful people in the land. We really have to restore that to the people. So I'd be very interested in looking at a very significant transparency agenda for the Supreme Court because I do not think they are held accountable. And I think way back when we used to say, oh, they're above the partisanship. Well, I have not believed that since Bush v. Gore when I saw extreme partisanship come out of our justices. justices and certainly with Judge Kavanaugh or now Justice Kavanaugh and the way he spoke in his last hearing, creating a screed saying this was some conspiracy of the Clintons and a screed against Democrats. And it was so inappropriate for a justice of the Supreme Court that I do believe we need a full transparency agenda put in place for them because they are no longer public servants

in the way that we've always imagined them to be. Let's talk about immigration, which is seemingly Trump's only political issue and one that where your thinking has evolved over the years. Oh, but I will just say one thing. That stuff that I just talked about is why we're not taking corporate PAC monies in my campaign. It's also why we're not taking federal lobbyist money. It's also why I don't think individuals should have super PACs. Because you have to start somewhere. And if you are unwilling to take on the special interests in a way that shows I value your voice as an individual more than a corporate interest or a billionaire's interest or people who can manipulate politics with their money, you will never get to health care as a right, not a privilege, because you need to take on the insurance companies and the drug manufacturers. You will never get to any of the issues. You will

never end gun violence if you won't take on the NRA. So this is the stuff that's necessary in this moment we're in. You really need a direct democracy and you need to restore that power back to the hands of the people, not the powerful interests that just control everything. Yes. So on immigration, you're in favor of a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. You've talked about splitting ICE, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, into two agencies, one that handles crime and terrorism, one that handles immigration. What would enforcement look like under a Gillibrand presidency? What would you do about immigrants who come across the border or overstay their visas? Right. So let me answer the first part of your question first and the second part second. So Democrats believe in border security. Democrats believe in national security. And the initial mission

of ICE was to do anti-terrorism. That was founded in 2003 to do anti-terrorism. So we need to fund anti-terrorism. And unfortunately, under this president, he's taken a lot of the money that would normally go for anti-human trafficking, anti-drug trafficking, anti-gun trafficking, and cross-border terrorism, and taken all that to put moms and babies in for-profit prisons and pay for those for-profit prisons. So, it gets me so angry. So, I believe that we should be funding the anti-terrorism work, keeping our country safe, making sure people know that law enforcement have the tools they need and the support they need to do hard work of arresting criminals and finding terrorists and arresting terrorists.

That has to continue. Immigration in our country has always been a strength. We thrive on our diversity. Our diversity has always been a strength. It helps to increase the economy. It helps to create entrepreneurialism and innovation. It's the American story. The Statue of Liberty stands in New York Harbor with a beacon of light and hope saying to the world, come, we will help you.

For anyone, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free, we are here, that beacon of light. We've never been afraid of refugees. We've never been afraid of immigration. We've always seen it as something that is part of our story. And so we need to build that, and it should be under the Department of Justice. It should be part of a humanitarian issue, certainly for asylum seekers, that has humanitarian issues. And immigration is an issue of families, making sure families who desperately want to be reunited can be reunited, and those communities can be strong and economic and making sure that we ultimately right-size immigration. And so that's why you need a comprehensive immigration approach, and you're going to do all of it. So you're not going to sacrifice national

security and anti-terrorism work. That needs to be fully funded as part of homeland security. But immigration is about so much more. It's not a criminal issue. It's not a national security issue. It's about who we are as a nation and what makes us strong. And immigration is going to be part of that. And so you've got to make it work. You have to have a pathway to citizenship for the 11 or 12 million folks that are here. You have to let people who are here start buying into Social Security and buying into paying their taxes and making sure they're investing in our schools. So you have to create a pathway for that to happen. And then you have to look at asylum very differently because we have a lot of reasons

why asylum seekers are coming here. You've got things happening in South America and Central America that, frankly, we're turning a blind eye to that we should be actually addressing, working with the international community with political solutions and diplomatic solutions to try to end the gun violence, gang violence, and terrorism that's happening in these communities that are making mothers send their young boys to travel by themselves to America so they just don't get recruited into a gang. Think about the problem that these people are facing. How many women are seeking refuge because of gang violence and rape and being just treated so horribly that they can't survive. So if you don't start with the

human story about what's actually happening in these families, you're not going to create the right solution. I promise you, locking them up in a for-profit prison or sticking lots of young boys in a Walmart with no windows is not the solution to the horror their lives are facing or our immigration challenges. And so I would do comprehensive and I would try to solve each problem based on what is the actual problem and get at it from the root. I guess yeah I guess my question is so say say we do comprehensive right and we provide a path to citizenship for all the undocumented immigrants who are here and then we you know democrats beef up border security not like not like not with the wall but maybe the border security we have you're still going to have people who come across the border you're still going to have after that you can then deal with them humanely you have so do you have visa overstays which happens all the

time and those folks are coming from countries that we have visas with these are these are people You can then deal with them humanely. You have visa overstays, which happens all the time. And those folks are coming from countries that we have visas with. These are people we have coming as tourist visas. So I think you just have to have a more humane system created so people know there's a real process. So they don't feel like they have to go around the law because the law is fair and just. They can feel like they can work with the law. And that is possible. We've done like they can work with the law. And that is possible. We've done that for many decades in this country, had a proper immigration process that

worked for people. It's when it lacks compassion and when it lacks empathy and when it lacks justice that people feel they can't trust the system. So let's build a system that they can trust and do it in the way that's healthy for our economy, our country, our families and our communities with the recognition that this only makes us stronger. So you spent your career as a senator working to reduce sexual assault in the workplace and the military and Congress. You've been called to the political face of the Me Too movement. You tweeted about how the future is female and intersectional. I saw that tweet and I thought that is a brave thing to tweet. Just from a political perspective, someone's going to run for president saying that. I could also hear

some cynical DC consultant, probably a guy in my head saying, okay, that's a great thing to tweet for a presidential primary, democratic primary. How do you deliver that message? Can you deliver that message in some of these redder states that Trump won that we know we need to win back? I definitely can and I have been because in my state, most people look at New York and say, oh, it's a blue state and it's New York City. But what they don't realize is upstate New York is a lot of red. It's a rural area. There's a lot of agriculture. There's a lot of manufacturing. There is a lot of red. It's a rural area. There's a lot of agriculture. There's a lot of manufacturing. There is a lot of the rural challenges we have in other parts of the country. The manufacturing tradition is a lot like Michigan. It's a lot like Ohio. It's a lot like

Wisconsin. Agriculture is a lot like Wisconsin and Michigan too. So there's just a lot of similarities with the rest of the country. Our suburbs in Westchester and in Long Island are purple. That's a lot of those white middle class moms who didn't vote with Democrats last time. They are in my state. And I do well with all of them talking about what I believe in. And not everybody necessarily knows what the tweet meant, but I certainly can explain it to them. How would you explain it to people who don't know? When you say the future's female, I'm not saying

the future's only female. I'm saying please include the ladies in the future because we have a lot to offer, which is why I created Off the Sidelines. It was a political action committee I created seven years ago,

a call to action asking America's women to vote, to become advocates, to participate, to run, to find a woman candidate to support

because we want 51% of women at the table. Why would you exclude half of our U.S. population from the decision-making table? And that's going to resonate in any community, because they know that their mom, or their sister, or their aunt, or their daughter have important things to say that they listen to in their own families. And so when you elevate men and women at the same table, you're going to have a diversity of opinion about what are the biggest problems, but also what are the best solutions. And the diversity of that really works. And I'll give you one example. So when I first got elected in 2006, I was put on the Armed Services Committee. And I'm sitting next to Gabby Giffords

and a bunch of new freshman women. And we were having a hearing on military readiness. And a lot of the men were talking about equipment. They wanted to know how many guns, how many ships, how many aircraft. It was all about the function of military readiness from an equipment perspective, from what are we going to buy and what are we going to build. But the women just instinctively were looking at other data and saying, well, why is the divorce rate as high as it is right now? Why is the suicide rate as high as it is? Domestic violence rate as high as it is right now? Why is the suicide rate as high as it is? Domestic

violence rate as high as it is? And we realize that military readiness also has to do with the troops and the service members. To say each one of these service members, they're being pulled to the thinnest. They're not having rotations at home. Their deployment times are longer than they've been in other conflicts. And there's no rest time and no dwell time, and they're struggling. And so the military readiness that we're talking about is both equipment and personnel. And so for America, that was a better answer for them, because the combination of our voices was strong. And so when I say the future's female, I'm talking about the fact that 120 women just ran for Congress and won. And what allowed them to win was all these women who came out and were activists and voted and have been marching since President Trump got elected to say, we don't agree with

you. We don't agree with your vision for this country. We don't agree with how you talk about people. We don't agree with the hatred. And we see a different future. And so it's a call to action saying we want to all be part of this discussion. And so back to- What about intersectionality? Let me finish this one and then I'll go to your- it's a call to action saying we want to all be part of this discussion. And so what about intersectionality? Let me finish this and then I'll go to your longer question.

So so I've been talking about this for seven years in New York state about why I want more women's voices at the table. I have the highest vote margin in the history of the state is 72 percent vote margin. And the reason why I have the highest vote margin in the history of state against anyone who's ever run statewide, including the presidentials, outperforming President Obama, outperforming Secretary Clinton, because when I'm talking to folks in red and purple places, I have time to tell them what I'm for and why, and they can see my heart and they understand it. And they also know how important women in leadership is. So that's all it takes. You just have to talk to people about their lives and what they care about and tell them why you care and why you want more women, more female leadership. So I've never hid that.

And I talk about it all the time. And people are okay with that. And they know when I'm trying to get rid of sexual harassment and sexual assault on a college campus or in the military or in Congress itself, I bring people together on those issues. My co-sponsor in working on sexual harassment in Congress was Ted Cruz. My co-sponsor in ending sexual harassment or sexual assault in the military was Rand Paul and Ted Cruz. Marco Rubio worked with me on sexual assault on college campuses. So you can cross party lines. You can talk to people from red and purple places if you just care about, if you talk about what you care about and why. And I've done it. So I know that I can talk to people in all parts of the

country about what they care about because I listen first, I find where the common ground is, and then I build from there. And that's how I bring people together. It's how I pass laws. It's how I get things done. And it's how New Yorkers see me. So I'd like to introduce that to everyone. So intersectionality, what that means to me is that if you are discriminated against in more than one way, it's intersectional. And, for example, if you are a woman, you're going to be discriminated against because of gender bias and sexism. If you're a black woman, you might be discriminated against because of racism. And the burden on that black woman is so much harder because she has to deal with racism and sexism at the very same time.

And if you explain that to someone who might not know what that word means, they're going to say, that's right, that is right. And then you give them a few facts like, well, you know, if you're a black woman in New York City and you went to go have a baby, you are 12 times more likely to die in childbirth because of institutional racism. If you explain to someone, law enforcement really isn't that fair. And if you are a black or brown man in my, in my city of New York city and in the country,

you are 10 times more likely to be arrested than a white man in New York city and four times more likely in the rest of the country for marijuana possession. So that's why I'm for decriminalization because how people are treated is unacceptable. And when someone's been arrested and put in jail for possession of marijuana, you know how their lives change? They might've missed work that day. They might be fired. They might've just lost the one job it took them a really long time to get. If their mom lives in one of the housing authorities in New York City,

and they want to go visit her on Thanksgiving, they can't. If that somehow gets in their record, and they go for a job interview, and this employer says, you ever been arrested? And he has to say, well, yeah, when I was 18, the job interview's over. And so criminal justice has to be important. and so criminal justice has to be important yeah and and in the economy like you'll see one of the issues you guys have talked about is postal banking 30 percent of our country doesn't have access to a savings account do you know it's very expensive to be poor in this country it means that if you have to wire some money to your your mother who's in puerto rico they're going to charge you maybe 20 of what you just sent her. Or if you want to buy a couch for your house, well, your only option is layaway. And the predatory lending aspect of

that, you're going to pay $500 for a couch that was $200 because you couldn't pay it all in one go. So I think as a white woman, it is my responsibility to take on these issues of institutional racism as if they were my own, because that's my job. And it should not be left as a burden for black and brown people to fight on their own. It should be me who can lift up their voices, can make sure their voices are heard, and so that we could end it.

And so those are my responsibilities as a woman who seeks to serve. And so I will talk about that in red, purple, and blue places. And I promise you, if I told any mom in America that if you're a black lady and you go to have a baby, you're going to more likely die, they're going to be as mad as I am because it's not okay. It's not okay. So you just have to take time. Well, somewhat related to that. I mean, you've talked about, last question, you talked about working with Republicans, and you obviously have this record in the Senate, where you were able to reach out to the other side and get stuff done. You talked about bringing

people together. You know, there's some people on the left, who often say, like, it's naive to think we're going to go after those Trump voters. It's a waste of our time and energy, we should be only going after non voters, because, you know, these Trump voters, even if even if they themselves aren't racist, they have supported this man that, you know, you yourself have called a racist, a misogynist. Are they wrong? Are those Democrats wrong? Yes, I do. I think you should ask everyone for their vote. And I think you should ask Americans to put this country first and our values first. We, despite all our flaws, have always believed in a more perfect union. We have fought as a nation to end discrimination over and over again, whether we're trying to abolish slavery or fighting for suffrage or fighting for basic civil rights for black Americans or fighting

for LGBTQ equality or clean air and clean water so that if you're poor, you're not being poisoned to death. These are issues that we have chosen as a country to bring people together towards a more perfect union, despite all our flaws. And we do it because we believe that we should care about one another. This country believes in the golden rule that we should treat others the way we want to be treated. We should protect and fight for the least among us. We have to remind America that's who we are. We have to heal this division and this hatred and this darkness that President Trump has created. I believe that only light can defeat darkness. We just had MLK Day. We're reminded of his amazing statements and amazing preaching and everything he's ever said. We celebrate his legacy once a year for that reason.

And he's not wrong. So only light can drive out darkness. And that is what I'm called to do, to be able to bring and fight for what's right, what's good against what's bad and what's harmful in all forms. And so I want to inspire all voters. And not enough, you know,

last election we lost for a lot of reasons, but you need to inspire all voters. And not enough, you know, last election we lost for a lot of reasons. But you need to inspire all voters. You need to inspire folks in red places, blue places, and purple places. And you're only going to do that if your vision actually reaches the people who you intend to serve. And you should intend to serve everyone. And you'll bring them with you. It doesn't mean you're going to, I don't think triangulating and running as a conservative is the way to go.

Run as the person you are. Run on the values that you want. You will bring people along. When I started running my two-to-one Republican district in upstate, I ran on getting out of Iraq, which would have been perceived by some as a very liberal issue. But I explained to folks, listen, we need to defeat terrorism. And we are not going to do that effectively with troops in Iraq if the Iraqis themselves won't push out terrorists. There's not enough military might in the world to defeat terrorism in a country that won't fight for it for themselves. I said we should redeploy out. We should invest in other anti-terrorism methods. But being in Iraq is the wrong way to keep us safe. By election day, from 30%, it went to 70% were for getting out of Iraq. So I would

just urge Democrats, speak your truth, speak your values, be for what you're for. If everyone doesn't agree with you on day one, you can bring them along. We don't have to accept the racism and division and the hatred that President Trump has created. I believe you can call on people to be better than that, to actually care about one another and speak to their better angels, not their worst demons. Kirsten Gillibrand, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. And come back again and good luck on the campaign. Thank you.

Thanks. Outro Music Thank you.