Pod Save America - “Chaos is a ladder.”

Episode Date: April 8, 2019

Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen is fired because she’s not extreme enough on immigration, Trump courts Jewish voters while accusing them of dual loyalty, Nancy Pelosi counsels pragmatism while predicting a House victory in 2020, and another 40 candidates enter the Democratic primary. Then Nobel Peace Prize nominee Amanda Nguyen talks to Tommy about building effective social movements. Also – Pod Save America is going on tour! Get your tickets now: crooked.com/events. 

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor. Later in the pod, Tommy's interview with Nobel Peace Prize nominee Amanda Wendt, who's behind a new effort to train young people to build social movements. We've got a lot of news to talk about first, from the resignation of Donald Trump's Secretary of Homeland Security and the Republican strategy to court Jewish voters, to Nancy Pelosi's strategy for keeping the House and the ever-expanding 2020 field. Quick programming note, we'll be out on the road again this week, so our Thursday night

show in Boston will be released as a pod on Friday, and our Sunday night show in New Hampshire will be released as next Monday's pod. Also a reminder that we dropped a bonus episode right before the weekend started. Tommy talked with Julian Castro about his presidential campaign on Friday right here in Los Angeles, and that entire interview is available now. You can also watch it at youtube.com slash crooked media. Wow. Smash that subscribe button.

Wow, you can see it too. You can listen to Tommy. You can watch Tommy. Radio on TV. It's great. All right, let's get to the news. During a meeting at the White House Sunday evening, Donald Trump asked for and then accepted the resignation of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.

As the great Dara Lind wrote over at Vox, Nielsen has arguably been the most aggressive secretary in the department's short history in cracking down on immigration, with her legacy likely to be defined by the zero-tolerance prosecution policy of late spring and early summer 2018 that resulted in the separation of thousands of families at the U.S.-Mexico border, none of it appears to have been enough for Donald Trump. So Nielsen's resignation came shortly after Trump decided to withdraw his nominee to run ICE because Stephen Miller and others wanted to go in a, quote, tougher direction. Replacing Nielsen on an acting basis will be Kevin McAleenan, who currently runs Customs and Border Protection. Trump's cabinet is now

operating without permanent secretaries in charge of Homeland Security, Interior, and Defense. And an acting chief of staff. And an acting chief of staff. Which is kind of the funniest one, because Trump could make Mulvaney permanent chief of staff today, he just doesn't do it because he wants him to feel small. That's right. There's no, I was

actually wondering about that, because it's the only one where, because he doesn't need it because he wants him to feel small. That's right. I was actually wondering about that because it's the only one where, because he doesn't need to actually get confirmation, he could just do it. I wonder if there are legal implications because he also is running OMB. He has Mulvaney running three-quarters of his government at any given moment. I mean, you don't have a lot of choice these days in the Trump White House if you're looking for staffers. There's not that many people there. There's tumbleweeds in the hallways.

Mick or Jared. It's Mick, Jared, Ivanka, Stephen Miller, and then a bunch of random people who they just found. Yeah, and Steve Bannon's empty Chinese food containers still lying around. A couple Pepe memes. So guys, what do we know about why Trump fired Nielsen and what he's looking for in his next Homeland Security secretary?

The reports are that she wasn't mean enough, John. The woman who oversaw the family separation policy that ripped kids away from their parents and separated them for months at a time doing permanent damage to these children was not mean enough for Donald Trump, according to background quotes in everything you read. enough for Donald Trump, according to background quotes in everything you read. And it also seems like in recent weeks, Donald Trump has said, NBC's first reported this, that he wants to reinstate the family separation policy, and she resisted that. Now, it's not really up to Donald Trump to reinstate it or her to resist it. The reason it ended is because, one, he signed an executive order ending it. And two, the court stepped in and said he couldn't do it. So it does seem like, I mean, you know, we always focus on personalities and we can talk about Nielsen all we want. But this is more of Donald Trump is facing an intractable policy problem that he cannot fix.

Right. And the legal problem that he cannot fix. Yeah, getting rid of her, saying he's going to shut the border, saying he's going to reinstate family separation. What he's frustrated with is that his cabinet secretaries aren't magical. They're not magical cruelty beasts who can use cruelty to implement his vision. I mean, Dan tweeted about this over the weekend, but there was a tweet by one Donald J. Trump that captures his attitude about immigration, which is, I'm doing such a good job at the border. Everything at the border is really good. Also, it's a total catastrophe.

It's an emergency. They're coming droves and we need to shut the border. And so he's trapped in this place where it's a signature issue. He's been president for, you know, he's running for reelection. This is the signature issue of his presidency. It's not a success, right? The cruelty is not redounded to policy benefits that he was hoping would happen. And it's clear he doesn't know what to do. So he's firing people. He's yelling. He's calling for crazy things. He likes the attention on the issue, but he's clearly angry about what's

been happening. And I don't think he has an answer. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, i think this is the uh i alone can fix it presidency yeah uh the coming to fruition here right like you trump promised that he could fix everything he thinks he can fix everything he thinks he can just fire people and get his way all the time and he has never realized and never learned that to solve a problem as complicated as immigration and look there is an influx of asylum seekers at the border right now. And, you know, any president, whether it's, and Donald Trump's policies helped fuel that influx of asylum seekers, but any president, Democrat or Republican, would be dealing with a lot of asylum seekers right now and have to figure out, well, what do I do about that? Most presidents would learn that you have to work within the bureaucracy. You have to work

with Congress. Maybe you need some support from the other party. Maybe you need to have lawyers telling you what's the most legal... You have to accept that it's complicated. It's hard. And that there are reasons to not be so strident because even if you have a view about how the immigration system could work, it's going to take time to get there. There are just complications to governing he's never shown any interest in on top of being a racist who's pursuing, you know, nativist, nationalist, revanchist policies in order to rile up his base. It's also clear that he just doesn't, he doesn't understand immigration policy in any way. Fundamentally. Fundamentally, in any way, shape, or form, despite it being the thing that he focuses on the most. Like, he referred to the Flores court

settlement, which bars the federal government from detaining minors for more than 20 days and blamed it on Judge Flores, whoever you may be, end quote. No, it was a little girl with the last name Flores that led to this agreement, I believe in the 80s. Yeah, years ago. And it came to be in like 97. He doesn't seem to understand, or at least he doesn't care, that building a wall doesn't stop people from seeking asylum. And in fact, so like, what do we do about it? We're stuck in this place where he says and does the same things over and over and over again in immigration policy.

And he just gets increasingly craven sounding, talking about doing away with asylum entirely, talking about closing down the border to Mexico, talking about eliminating all aid for Latin American or Central American countries. And the press covers it because it's crazy and new and like completely counterproductive. But I don't know what else to do. We're stuck in this cycle. And it is alarming because it seems like even since the midterms, he has sort of attacked the rule of law even more than he has. As we've all, as you've said many times, love it, he's the raptor testing the fence here. And what he's looking for is another Homeland Security Secretary and other personnel who will help him essentially break the law. Because he's now stuck. And he also said the other day day what we need to do is

get rid of the judges and he's just it's just like it's authoritarian riffing like he hasn't thought very deeply he has no discipline right there's no plan here i mean it is i think part of the reason why it's important that the media does cover what he says about immigration is it's actually one of the few places where he's followed through on some of his more outlandish promises right the zero tolerance policy resulting in family separation, that began as this kind of frenetic, off-the-cuff riffing, and then all of a sudden it's policy. But usually he's had to step back from those because of the courts.

Including this one. And I don't blame them for covering him when he says all these outlandish things, but it does reinforce this notion that there is a massive, like unprecedented crisis at the border, which just simply isn't notion that there is a massive, like unprecedented crisis at the border, which just simply isn't true. There's a huge problem at the border. There's a growing number of people coming up from Central America and seeking asylum. And the system is being stressed to the point of breaking, but he's doing things to make that situation worse, not better. I also think, I think there is a legitimately a humanitarian crisis at the border right now.

Because, you know, I think we've had triple the number of asylum seekers this month than we had last month. And they've been metering them, so they're not hearing their cases. So they're all stuck in camps in Mexico. Well, that's the issue. So it's a humanitarian crisis. It is not a national security crisis, which is how the administration is talking about it. These are not people who are criminals. These are not people who are coming to our country and causing crime.

These are mostly women and children and families who are seeking asylum. And what has happened is there is this huge backlog of cases right now while they're seeking asylum about whether their asylum application will be processed. We don't have enough judges. There's a backlog of cases. And Trump this whole time is focusing on fucking building a wall which will do nothing about this he has some some offense that like he has only repaired some miles of fencing since coming to office he has built zero miles of new fencing well this is the thing that's so strange right now I imagine I mean this is partly why he's sort of raging about this is that he's trapped

here because on the one hand, he does, I think, correctly see this as one of the few things he can successfully talk about with his base. And on the other hand, he's not a candidate. He's not a candidate. He's the president, right? So he has a record here. So I think a lot of this venting at Nielsen, venting at the fact that these people weren't tough enough, is looking for someone to be able to run against, basically, to say, like, this is run against basically to say like, this is what has prevented me from actually implemented my vision. And I think it comes back to,

I think it's, it's worth looking at what Nielsen represents because I think it's important that she's leaving. And it's important that we're having this conversation about her legacy because she is what happens when you try to like put a layer of seriousness, a layer of adulthood, like icing on this Trump cake of sort of bigotry and chaos and frenetic tried to put a layer of seriousness, a layer of adulthood, like icing on this Trump cake of sort of bigotry and chaos and frenetic.

You think she's the icing? I think she's the, I think icing is the wrong word. I mean that she's like, she is pretty horrible. Of course she's horrible. What I'm saying is she tried to do what Trump wanted to do while looking like a traditional serious cabinet secretary. I don don't agree with that she fucking went to the press briefing room and lied like crazy like that's not serious that's just being a that's just being a polished looking liar but that's what i mean she's a polish she is a polished representative of trumpism presenting trying to do but presenting well is a very different thing in my opinion than like

acting like an adult in the room and trying to calm his worst instincts, which she never, ever did. Well, that's what they're claiming, right? That's what they claim behind the scenes. That's what they want to spin at us. We've had so many conversations about personnel in this White House, right? And I think what we've learned is some of these people resist him for a time, most don't. Some people resist him sometimes

and then end up giving in to him anyway, right? But that's what I mean. The personalities in this administration, whether it's a Gary... What the fuck was his name? Cone? Gary Cone. Wow.

Whether it was a Gary Cone or a John Kelly or a Kirsten Nielsen or a Stephen Miller, whether they're with him all the time, with him sometimes, not with him sometimes, he gets his way in the end because he's bulldozing people left and right. He's the president. He's bulldozing norms.

He's trying to break the law. He's bulldozing norms. He's trying to break the law. He's doing all the shit. That's the point. She thought she could come in and be respectable, be a serious Republican inside the Trump administration. It turns out that's impossible. You become the representative of what requires lies in order to execute, and you leave tarnished by Trump and having succeeded in, in, in,

in it and having failed to do anything to mitigate his worst impulses. I think we have to worry about now is, you know, so McAleenan reportedly has said that when they're talking about bringing back family separation, that he might present families with a binary option, which is either you can be separated from your children or you can all go into detention together indefinitely. And they're contemplating this policy.

That's illegal per the Flores agreement, which says you cannot hold kids for longer than 20 days. So I guess we're reaching another breaking point where we're going to have to decide. Maybe Republicans in the Senate will have to decide if we're going to just allow the Trump administration to brazenly break the law. Maybe a court will jump in and stop them from doing this. But we saw this with the Magnitsky sanctions about Jamal Khashoggi. They were required under law to present their findings to Congress. And they said, nope, not going to do it. And no one said anything. And again, we should remember that back when Republicans controlled the House and the Senate, Donald Trump had a chance to pass some kind of immigration policy

where he got more border security, maybe even some money for his wall. A lot of money for his wall. A lot of money for his wall, right? You know, help DACA recipients and Dreamers and even, you know, ended family migration, Paul. Five times the amount of money for what he shut the government down over

for border security, right? It was $25 billion was on the table what he shut the government down over for border security, right? It was 25 billion was on the table. He shut the government down over 5 billion. He's turned down 25 billion. Yeah. I mean, from whether you're looking at it from the right or the left, his immigration policy has been a failure, an abject failure. I mean, you look at what's happening right now, right? All

of this, you step back and like all this asylum conversation shutting down the border, the judges trying to blame, you know, trying to foment in front of a fucking group of American Jews that the country's full saying the asylum seekers are faking and saying it's all about trying to ferret out the share of asylum seekers who might not deserve asylum. That is the primary focus of the Donald Trump administration at the border. Finding the group of asylum seekers. I'm not finding, trying to convince everyone that that small group that doesn't deserve asylum is everyone. Is everyone?

Is everyone? That's what he's trying to say. Of course it's everyone. But even just the idea that even if you accept that a share of the asylum seekers don't deserve asylum, this is not a crisis. This is not a national security crisis. It's not a national security threat. It's not worthy of an endless debate over and over and over again.

It's not the most important issue facing the country. It's not the most important issue at the border. But it's going to be the issue in the fucking 2020 election because he's going to make it the issue every day. Yeah. So as you mentioned, Lovett, we did hear some of the president's xenophobic rage over immigration during a speech to the Republican Jewish Coalition in Las Vegas on Saturday, where he said that our current asylum system is a, quote, scam and that families and children seeking asylum should turn back because the United States is full. First of all, is the Republican Jewish Coalition not an odd place to declare

that the United States will no longer provide refuge to groups of people fleeing violence and persecution? You'd like to think it wouldn't be. You'd like to think it wouldn't be. But I thought the thing that was most chilling is the fact that him saying america's full that they're faking it works in front of this audience now and it's like come on people shame on you yeah i mean trump telling a group of of jewish voters that america's full to a room that included an audience with holocaust survivors in it is one of the most historically ignorant insulting things you could

ever imagine him saying to that audience. But he did. I can't imagine the Holocaust survivors in that audience hearing that. Especially with America's history of there was a time when we turned back Holocaust survivors. Entire boats full of individuals who later died in concentration camps. We drastically restricted immigration quotas and enforcement and made it almost impossible to immigrate to the United States in the 30s and 40s, 20s, 30s. So Trump also made an appeal to Jewish Republicans in his speech by saying that the Democrats are pushing an extreme anti-Semitic agenda, quote, and attacking

Representative Ilhan Omar just a few days after federal agents arrested a Trump supporter who threatened to, quote, put a bullet in her head. And to show the audience what a good friend he is to American Jews, Trump referred to Benjamin Netanyahu as, quote, your prime minister and said the Democrats could, quote, leave Israel out there all by yourselves. In response, the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee both criticized the president's statement for, quote, feeding bigotry and, quote, leading people to believe that Jews aren't loyal Americans. Guys, do you think all the Republicans and D.C. pundits who accused Ilhan Omar of feeding the dual loyalty trope are busy writing their takes about Trump today?

Think those op-eds are getting printed? It's so frustrating. You know, look, he has done some of the most, you know, he has bought into anti-Semitic tropes in front of Jewish audiences again and again and again. That is what he does. He thinks it's charming. And if you listen to the way the crowd reacts, sometimes the crowd finds it charming too. And it's very frustrating because it's a, they don't, it's, I think the biggest reminder of it is that, that this is a bad faith attack on Democrats, obviously. And it's just a reminder that he can go in front of these crowds and use these tropes himself. While attacking Democrats for

being anti-Semitic. In the next breath. While right-wing anti-Semitism is on the rise. I mean, you couldn't write down a more clear-cut example of accusing someone of dual loyalty than telling them you're prime minister. But in 2015, he told the same group, you're not going to support me even though you know I'm the best thing that could ever happen to Israel because I don't want your money. You don't want to give me money. You want to control your own politician. He said that to them. That is the most anti-Semitic thing I've ever heard. And the reason that doesn't get replayed on Fox News and Breitbart and Loops is because Trump's a Republican and because Ilhan Omar is an African-American Muslim who wears a hijab.

That is the reason they play her shit over and over and over again, her comments. Now, there are reasonable people who could hear those comments and think that's offensive. That's unfair. I don't like that. I completely respect them for feeling that way. And certainly, certainly she received near universal condemnation. But what Trump does and says is worse. And we're not even talking about all the literal Nazis whois who love him barely a blip hit these comments and you know it's it's funny because

it's it's um you know trump does it like oh we're all in on the joke yeah you know you negotiate i negotiate you know you're rich jews you know jews you love your money uh but but it's not a joke to a lot of people who want who are watching it and And Donald Trump doesn't just engage in this kind of anti-Semitic rhetoric in front of Jews. He has done it before. He's famously done it in private. It's been reported on many times. You go back, look, it's a small thing. But when Jon Stewart made fun of Donald Trump, Donald Trump referred to him as Jon Leibovitz over and over again.

Why? Because it was his Jewish name. And he would put Stewart in question marks. And he would call him, I don't even remember them off the top of my head, but he would use all kinds of anti-Semitic words about John Stewart. It is his nature. It's what he's using to appeal to people. And it is shameful for Jewish people to smile and smirk at this kind of fucking rhetoric that America's full, that you're rich Jews who just try to buy our politicians because you think that he's in on the joke. There's a lot

of people who aren't. It's also important to understand that these are not just bad faith attacks coming from Donald Trump. This isn't just like Trump spouting off. The Republican Jewish Coalition and Sheldon Adelson are reportedly planning a $10 million campaign in 2020 to convince Jewish Americans, who traditionally vote overwhelmingly Democratic, to vote for Donald Trump, the man who just called the Prime Minister of Israel their leader. And I

can, and I don't think it's directed, I think it's going to be directed at Jewish Americans, but I think it's particularly directed at older Jewish Americans. For sure. And my personal experience in my family, what I hear, I, and for sure. And if my, my personal experience in my family, what I hear, I,

I think it's working. I mean, so for a certain subset of older Jews, I think it's working. Yeah. I think, look, I don't disagree.

I mean, there's, there's 10 million bucks to reach 2% of the U S population. But obviously if you're trying to swing a couple thousand voters in Florida or Pennsylvania, this matters a lot. That said, like exit polling data since like the 90s has shown that Jewish voters pretty overwhelmingly go to Democrats. But also J Street has done a bunch of polling because, you know,

hawkish Republicans always claim that the Jewish vote could be swung by just talking about Israel. But in fact, when they ask, J Street's pollster asked American Jews, like, what are your top two voting issues? They usually say the economy, healthcare, terrorism, gun violence, about 10% or less in these polls say Israel. Also 80% of American Jews support a two-state solution. So it may be the case that this is a threshold issue

for a lot of older Jewish voters where they think if the Democrat is insufficiently pro-Israel, they then can look to the Republican Party. And that's probably the argument they're trying to make. But just stepping back a bit, the unflinching Republican support for everything Israel does has nothing to do with Jewish voters. It has everything to do with evangelical voters who the furthest right wing of which think that Israel needs to be fully controlled to have the rapture come and that all the Jews will later be converted to Christianity or they'll go to hell. They're talking to John Hagee

and Jerry Falwell Jr. and those crazy creeps far more than they're actually talking to Jewish voters, I believe. Yeah. I still want to find the Democratic Jewish voters who are Democratic in every way, but because of Trump's position on Israel are now moving over, as opposed to older Jewish voters who are already sort of Trumpified and then thus are more willing to listen to this message. And I don't know the answer, but... I don't think we know either. But I do think it's this kind of thing where it's just this, it's just – it's sowing this little bit of doubt in the minds of a subset of American Jews.

Say like, hey, you can't trust these Democrats. Maybe you'll stay home. Maybe you'll vote for Trump. Maybe you'll just – maybe it will just become a bigger issue for you. But it's just there to kind of just stoke that little bit of fear. That's what the Omar stuff too is. It just leaves a little bit of a mark. I totally agree.

I mean one of my neighbors is a Holocaust survivor, and I went over to her house once. She's incredibly old, but Fox News is on all day, every day, blaring, and she's probably seeing story after story about Ilhan Omar. Yes, it works. And also, just one more thing, and we'll get to it, but it's also about equating

supporting Israel with supporting right-wing American politics and supporting right-wing Israel politics, right? That's like the biggest, that's the most important long-term project that they've been engaged in. Well, speaking of that, just days before the elections coming up in Israel this week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in an interview that he'd start annexing settlements in the West Bank if he's re-elected. Netanyahu, who's the subject of multiple investigations, is fighting for his political life. Tommy, why is he saying this and how bad is it? So just a little context. So, you know, Bibi called early elections because he thought it would prevent the attorney general in

Israel, who he handpicked, who is a total right winger as well, from bringing forward indictments about him or starting the process of indicting him on corruption charges. That did not work. So now he's cut. How did we get that? William Barr? Well, their legal system takes even longer than ours.

It's frustrating. So basically, you know, this election is on Tuesday. And Bibi is, it's not just that the Likud would win, his party would win outright, like the Democrat or Republican party wins outright. There's like 40 different parties running and they each to get a seat in the Knesset. You need to reach three point two five percent because it's a proportional system. So what he's trying to do is get support from the furthest right wing political parties and to get out Likud members by doing these drastic last minute things. In the 2016 election, the day before the election day or the day of the election day, he released a wildly racist video that said Arab voters were going to the polls in droves because they wanted to take him out. And that was how he inched over the line.

And he is attacking get out the vote efforts among non-Jews. And so this is very similar. I mean, it's actually in a lot of ways equivalent to Donald Trump's sort of caravan stuff right before the election. Oh, yeah. Same exact thing. Netanyahu has been in power for a decade. Days before the election, he announces a new right word, right wing policy on the West Bank. First of all, do people, why wouldn't people see through that? But also, the only reason Netanyahu faces a threat right now is that there's been a kind of a new coalition formed in the center of Israel. But everyone kind of recognizes that Israel has moved to the right. Why?

Like, what explains this power that he has? He's been a survivor for a long time. He's had personal corruption charges against him since the very beginning. He's running against a guy named Benny Gantz and a coalition of former Israeli generals who I think, frankly, if they win, we will not be close to happy with their politics either. So, I mean, with regard to the need to annex West Bank settlements, basically every member of the Likud policy has already come out in support of this policy. It's just that no prime minister ever has and Netanyahu ever has. So do you think it's a popular policy with the Israeli people?

I think it's growing more popular and it's certainly probably very popular in the Likud party, which is his, you know, the, the conservative party and parties to the right. So what he's trying to do because of their weird system is he needs to forge coalitions with these super far right-wing policies, including one that was so racist that they were compared to Nazis, literally, uh, and, and to get out all his people, because you could have a, you can have a scenario where a more moderate party wins more votes than the Likud party. But if they can't form a coalition to form a government, then it falls back to whoever else can pull it off. So that's what his play is here. Now, I mean, the problem with this policy is most people view it as a nail in the coffin of a two-state solution.

It's an apartheid state if they do that. There's always been an assumption that in a negotiated two-state solution, there are Israeli settlements that are right along the border that would be swapped in terms of territorial swaps so that they would remain part of Israel. What's happened is the settlement construction has gotten so far into the West Bank

that to carve out all of those areas and bring them into Israel, you basically would make it so you just have these little islands of territory that become the West Bank. There's no contiguous state. There's lots of little dotted. There's lots of little things.

Seems like that was by design, huh? Well, yeah. I mean, yeah. And so Israel now faces this existential choice where they can continue to go for a two-state solution or they can essentially annex the West Bank and have a one-state solution. But then you will then incorporate 2.8 million Palestinians into Israel. And that question becomes, is this now a democratic state? Do they have the right to vote? And if they don't, it's no longer a democratic state.

And presumably one of the obstacles to a prime minister annexing the West Bank was that they'd face international rebuke, including from the United States, but Donald Trump won't do that. That's exactly right. I mean, every other, you know, Bibi may have wanted to do this for a very long time. Obama had to force him to say he supported a two-state solution back in 2009. They know that Trump will not say a damn word because they handed over the Golan Heights and they moved the Jerusalem embassy, which, you know, in fairness to Trump, every other president has promised to do and not done. But Trump will never question this. Trump will never question this. All right, let's talk about the Democrats. In a new wide-ranging interview with The Washington Post, Speaker Nancy Pelosi predicted that her party will hold on to the House in 2020,

saying that she's, quote, going to have our races won by this November. She's such a boss. That's a year early, Nancy. Then she's got the next year to just sort of chill out. Yeah, take up meditation. Kick back. Paul Kane of the Post wrote that Pelosi rejected the idea

that today's Democrats are further to the left than a decade ago. She said it was just a few high profile people in Congress and then a few presidentials and has instead charted a course of again, appealing to moderate suburbanites and some rural voters frustrated, frustrated by Trump's reality TV style presidency. She doesn't want to focus on impeaching Trump or on farfetched legislation that has no hope of passing and divided government.

This is all from Kane. She promises not to repeat the mistakes leading up to 2010, saying, quote, you cannot let your opponents characterize, mischaracterize what you're about. So what was missing from that election was a strong messaging piece, and that's what we had in this last election in 2018.

What do we think about Pelosi's strategy here? I don't particularly understand the 2010 point, right? Because the other thing... I don't think it the 2010 point, right? Because the other thing – I don't think it was a messaging problem in 2010. Well, I think even if there is a messaging problem, there's a big difference between running to take power and running to keep power. Especially, by the way, we should just lay out the context. Running to keep power after you have passed a massive government program, the Affordable Care Act, and the economy has not even started recovering from the worst recession since the Great Depression.

And we're in this – That was 2010. We're in this – a word I constantly regret using, this liminal space between Obamacare passing – Liminal space. Yeah, between Obamacare passing and being vilified and Obamacare actually becoming something that's a part of people's lives, right? Which happened like yesterday. Yeah, which, man, that took a long time. People started liking it right before 2018. We stood up geocities.healthcare.gov and that didn't work. Now people love it. Now they can't get enough of it. Now they want more.

What else do we think about her strategy? They're saying, you know, it's moderate suburbanites, you know, rural voters. She's worried about them. I mean, it seems like they're she's trying to give cover to a lot of moderate Democrats who won in 2018 in districts where impeachment might not be popular in districts where some of the more progressive legislation that we've all talked about ad nauseum might not be as popular. She's trying to take some slings and arrows for them in advance of them having to talk about it. Yeah, I mean, one thing we have to understand is that Nancy Pelosi's job is different from any of these Democratic presidential candidates. They're trying to put together a coalition, a national coalition that adds up to 270 electoral votes. In doing so, we have often said that you need a candidate who can rally and inspire the base of the party, including people who haven't felt like they wanted to vote before, non-voters, and still appeal to sort of these middle-of-the-road,

independent, swing voters, whatever you want to call them. And that's what we need in the presidential level. On the House level, there are a lot of districts where there's not a lot of base voters. And there's not a lot of like trying to get – and that is – and we have to remember and recognize that in 2018, we did not win the House because there was this sort of like liberal surge among the base. We won the House because in a lot of these districts, there were a lot of Republican voters who decided to vote Democrat for the first time

and independent voters. And that's what's on Nancy Pelosi's mind. And that is a different task than what the presidential candidates have to do. I also just think, you know, we've talked about this before too. There are no really grand conclusions you can draw from 2018 in the sense of saying,

this is the way you need to run to win a House seat, right? There were California districts that we won, even with very liberal candidates, but still won by pulling in independents and pulling in Republicans. There are more liberal districts where people like AOC could mount a campaign that not only helps them win the district, but kind of creates a new benchmark for how far the left can be inside the democratic party and that has value so like you know there are gonna be places where democrats can run on medicare for all can run on can run can can call for impeachment can can can put a marker down for the green new deal and then there are gonna be districts where people have to run a more moderate race that's that's the game that's okay right that's all i mean and and we should say it's not to say

that if you are in one of these purple red reddish districts, you have to run some moderate centrist campaign. We've made this point a million times, but Katie Porter won a suburban district out here that was very Republican. She's for Medicare for all. She's a protege of Elizabeth Warren. Still won that race. But it's not like there's a lot of Democrats who are in some of these reddish purple districts who won their seats by talking about abolishing ICE. Yeah. I mean, there's also just a lot of jockeying going on. You see it every day on Twitter to define who is a progressive, what progressivism is.

A lot of it is involved discussion about Medicare for all or a buy in plan or legislation Pelosi put forward to to sure up Obamacare in the interim. Right. Like that? Like, that's a conversation that's happened a lot. It was interesting talking to Julian Castro, because he has an immigration policy that is way to the left of anyone else. And that's not seen as the same sort of litmus test. So it's a question of how will he start to define his policy as the litmus test for what it means to be progressive? Or will he at all? Because like, that's how you're going to get to the left of some of these people in this campaign. It's also worth remembering too, there's this balance that someone like Nancy Pelosi has to strike, right? Because on the one

hand, she's setting the agenda, right? She's going to decide what it does mean to be progressive in a way that's practical, right? She is going to help set that boundary. At the same time, she's also going to share this kind of like, what does amount to kind of a form of punditry and saying, here's what I believe some candidates have to do. Here's what I believe other candidates have to do. But the thing to remember is what we have seen repeatedly is that Nancy Pelosi is not going to be the obstacle to how far left Democratic politics can go. The House version of Obamacare was further to left than the Senate version of Obamacare. Anything we end up passing, if we are so lucky as to take the Senate, the bound will be determined by the debates that take place inside of the Senate.

Her job is just to retain the House, try to build that majority, right? Well, yeah, and it's also a question of let's fight about what version of health care legislation we pass once we actually have the power to pass it. Yeah. we actually have the power to pass it. As opposed to fighting about it now, because you can vote for Medicare for all, you can vote for Bernie Sanders' bill and Representative Jayapal's bill in the House right now on single payer,

or you could vote for Nancy Pelosi's ACA legislation that would shore up the ACA. Either of those votes right now, they ain't going anywhere after they leave the House. Right, and notably, Congresswoman Jayapal supports Pelosi's bill to sure up ACA. That's right. Now, the one exception, I think, to what Lovett was saying is that Pelosi is trying to support efforts by the DCCC to prevent people from helping out primary challengers to the Democratic Party.

So to the extent she is protecting incumbents, I guess you could argue that that prevents the party from moving to the left. But it's also completely understandable from her point of view to not want to spend money on primaries. It's the kind of thing McConnell would do. We would all sort of grudgingly admire how cynical and awful he is. I personally think if you want to primary someone in a safe district, go for it. That's great. It's a notable exception. primary someone in a safe district, go for it.

That's great. It's a notable exception. That's where I disagreed with her in this interview is her decision to support the DCCC's blacklist. So like you said, the DCCC is basically saying we will blacklist any firm, any consulting firm that works for anyone who's mounting a primary challenge to a sitting House Democrat. And look, I think primaries are healthy for this party. Now,

I think, look, it's interesting. Ro Khanna, who's one of the more liberal members of the House, he seems to have floated a compromise. And he said, well, why don't we say that if you're mounting a primary challenge to someone in a safe blue seat, you know, we won't blacklist your consulting firm and you should be able to do whatever you want about that primary challenge. But you shouldn't mount a primary challenge to someone who's sitting in a reddish purple seat that could flip and i think that's a pretty sensible compromise but look we have to understand that primary challenges within the democratic party and house challenges have happened for such a long time right like uh barack obama ran against bobby rush uh for his first

congressional race you know that's how beto o'rourke won his seat, mounted a primary challenge, right? Like, this has happened for a long, long time now. I also don't think this is going to dissuade anyone from running. It is going to create a debate, a debate we're having right now that basically says that a portion of the party's opinion isn't wanted or isn't welcome. It's also going to mean that there's firms

that are going to then become primary. Like, I don't even know how this shakes out, but you end up in a situation where you're literally dividing the party between people who work for incumbents and people who work for primary challengers. And there's a lot of places where there should be primary challengers because these are very blue districts with, you know, members that have been there for a long time who don't represent the best interests of their district and are far to the right of where the Democratic

mainstream has become. Or if you think that they do represent the district, then they make that case to voters and, you know, and whoever wins, wins. Right. Why do you want, why do you put your thumb on the scales like that? They're trying to mount a primary challenge to Richard Neal in Massachusetts, you know, because he won't hold a hearing on Medicare for all in the Ways and Means Committee. Now they're going to hold a hearing for Medicare for all in the House. Nancy Pelosi has already promised that he doesn't want to do so in his committee. He's also the guy that's now going after Trump's tax returns. You could make an argument that he's pretty liberal,

but if you say that he's not liberal enough, run the primary challenge. If he's liberal enough, he wins the seat. If not, he doesn't. That's how it goes. I also think there might just be a practical problem here for the DCCC. If you have a pollster who's working on 10 races for you, and they're on calls with your paid media team, your research team, your comms team all the time, and that person is also working on a primary challenger against some of your incumbents,

it just creates some weird challenges that they're probably getting ahead of. You can have an inspector general running around, crunching the numbers. It all feels like a lot of work to prevent someone from doing some polling and running some ads. Also, it kind of elevates the role that consultants play. It's just the whole thing is too much.

Which is already way too elevated in people's minds because of all these stories. It's actually not as big of a deal either way. You're going to deny consultants? The consultants don't make the fucking race either way. They just don't. You're going to take away the lifeblood of these campaigns? Well, everyone thinks you hire high-priced consultants and they win your campaign for you. It's just not what happens.

You need a good candidate and a good message. That's the fundamentals. You have a consultant come out there and be like, remember, middle class. Yeah, no shit, right? That'll be five grand. That probably actually happens. Yeah. So, you know, speaking of all this, our old boss, Barack Obama, was talking to young leaders in Berlin over the weekend, and he said that he worries that sometimes progressives create a circular firing squad because our allies stray from purity on the issues.

Is he right to worry? Is he on Twitter? Does he have a secret Twitter account? No, which is good for him. I think he just probably hears the fights. He might be right. It might be totally fine that there is a constant roiling conversation about democratic policy ideas that consumes the media narrative the way the fucking Trump show did in 2016. I have no idea.

I do think, look, it drives me crazy personally when I see people running down, for example, the Affordable Care Act, because I think it's the height of privilege to say that Medicare expansion or 20 million people getting health insurance is not somehow significant for those individuals. Right. So like that's you might think I'm wrong and that's just fine. But I think it's an absurd argument. Yeah. My view on this has always been we should absolutely have fierce policy debates over the direction of the party. And everyone should be free to participate in those debates. But what I start worrying about is challenging each other's motivations, right? When you pick a specific policy saying that you're a corporate shill or you're doing this for this reason or that reason.

that you're a corporate shill or you're doing this for this reason or that reason, that's when it starts to get bad because that's when we start telling each other that this Democrat is not worthy because they're a little bit to the right on this policy or that policy. That's a problem. It's completely fine to say my candidate supports this policy, the other candidate supports this policy. I don't think it goes far enough and so that's why i'm that's why i'm for my great then fight that out yeah it's also i think part of it gets much nastier than that on twitter yeah i mean i think part of it is that so much of our debate around candidates around politics or ideology is about what we'll do when we get power yeah that ends up being an argument about who's really

going to do what they say they're going to do, who can you really count on, who's really progressive, when the evidence, the record you're going on is mostly words, mostly proposals, mostly how strongly they talk about certain issues. And I think then when debates, I guess it's like circling fire swats, like, well, what's in the chamber? You know, like, what are we firing at each other? And it's like, when a debate boils down to C, this is why you can't trust this person. C, this is why you shouldn't ever listen to this person.

C, this is why you should disabuse yourself of this entire wing of the party. I think that is when you have crossed a line. Yeah. Also, I'm totally fine with elections being really contentious. I think vetting candidates is a good thing. You should dig into their record. We should do it now before that person wins and it happens in the general election.

That should be our operating assumption. I don't care if it's nasty and contentious. I just think it's an argument that you should think about whether the way you attack someone's motives or criticize them personally might turn someone off from your candidate permanently. Yeah. And that's a that's a thing that people should consider. And I'll say I saw people pointing out that, you know, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton ran quite a contentious race

against each other in 2008, maybe more contentious than the Bernie Hillary race in 2016. I think there's a lot of evidence for that. But you know what? All of us on both campaigns, the Obama campaign, the Clinton campaign, we'll look back at some of those debates and some of those attacks, and we're not super proud of all of it. You know, like that debate where she's saying you're slumlord Resco and Obama's saying you sat on the corporate board of Walmart, like I don't think that was a great moment for either of them. And I don't think that was very constructive,

and I don't think that helped either of them and helped the party at all. Well, part of the problem of those debates at the time what they'd been debating for such a long time their policy differences were minimal yeah it was just it was just the uh it was the uh the mandate the man the health care mandate where and some and some vote on iran i think there's the whole iraq war thing oh that was the right but of course but by but by but that by then these fights had been litigated so much and mostly what they had been proposing to do as president aligned so much that they were left with so little to actually yell at each other about. And it was so frustrating.

Iraq was the big one, and then Iraq was in the past. So then it was like, going forward, it was too similar, too. Well, that was the IRGC designation, which Trump did today. I was just thinking about that. All right, let's talk about 2020. Over the last few days, I think something like 40 additional Democrats announced they're running for president. Ohio Congressman Tim Ryan announced on Thursday the 45-year-old Ryan, who's been in Congress since 2003, is perhaps best known for running unsuccessfully against Nancy Pelosi for minority leader back in 2016.

He pitched himself on The View as, quote, a progressive who knows how to talk to working class people and get elected in working class districts. California Congressman Eric Swalwell is announcing his bid on Colbert tonight, Monday night, and he'll be hosting a town hall this week on gun safety with our friend Cameron Kasky, one of the survivors of the shooting last year in Parkland, Florida, because he wants to focus his campaign on gun violence. Colorado Senator Michael Bennett said last week that despite a recent prostate cancer diagnosis, he's committed to running for president once he's healthy. last week that despite a recent prostate cancer diagnosis,

he's committed to running for president once he's healthy. Others still considering a run include former Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, Montana Governor Steve Bullock, and Stacey Abrams. So outside of Stacey Abrams, who I'm going to put aside because she is fantastic and has a national profile, I've seen a lot of complaining and mocking on Twitter about all of these prospective candidacies. Let's take the other side, just for shits and giggles here. What's the argument for

running if you're one of these candidates? What are they seeing when they look at the political environment and the current field that's telling them, I should do this? It's hard. I don't know. I honestly don't know. I mean, look, Eric Swalwell is an easier example. It seems like he wants to run a campaign that's primarily focused on stopping gun violence. Right. That is admirable. Sort of like the Jay Inslee campaign. That's an interesting approach. But I also think it's an open question for me if that approach where you say, I'm the climate change candidate like Jay Inslee did, is the best way to elevate that issue.

I would argue that AOC did a hell of a lot more to elevate the issue of climate change or the people who protested Dianne Feinstein's office than Jay Inslee has so far. Now it's early. Maybe that will change, but that's my honest take on it. So maybe, I don't know, maybe they're going to bring something to this race that we can't see yet. And so we should by no means rule them out. It's just when you enter this late, it's hard to fundraise. It's hard to get staff. It's hard to meet the thresholds to get into debates. I'm not sure I get the strategy. I don't know. So if you think about running on an issue, you know, there's two reasons to run on the issue. One is because you want to make the issue central to politics or two, you want to use the issue as a launching pad for your own legitimate, full-throated presidential race. I don't know, in the case of Swalwell or Inslee, what the goal is. But in either case, you know, you look at this field right now, you see Beto O'Rourke, who is no longer in Congress, who has raised millions of dollars. You see Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who turned, and this is not a criticism of him at all, who turned a few key moments on television

where he was thoughtful and interesting and new into enough of a base of support to get on the debate stage. You look at that and you say, all right, I have one persuasive, powerful moment about the climate. I have one persuasive, powerful moment about gun control in a CNN town hall. Maybe I can get the 65,000 donors. Maybe I get on the debate stage. And the debate stage is a chance to reach the people that you can't reach when you don't have a national profile. And so maybe a lot of people are saying the debate stage is the threshold. If I make it, I make a shot at

it. If I don't, I'm out. I think that's exactly right. I think I have a few thoughts on this. I mean, I think this all started with, it might have started with Barack Obama winning the presidency, right? He was a state senator who was then a senator for a year and then became president of the United States. It accelerated in a huge fucking way with Donald Trump winning the presidency because he was just, we know this whole story. We don't have to repeat it again, but Donald Trump is president now. So there's that, right? Thank you for skipping. Yeah, I was going to for skipping previously on America.

We know how that ended. So you see that and then you think, okay, well, you know, anyone can really do this now, right? If Donald Trump's president, anyone can do this now. And then you think the way that the media has changed, right, where you can get all this national attention for a couple viral moments, right? And the way that raising money in the Democratic Party has changed you used to have to like know a bunch of rich donors and sit with them and suck up to them and get money that way now you can raise a ton of money online and so they look at all this kind of stuff

and I think you're right especially it started with Beto in this race but especially Buttigieg right where these people these are people are congressmen or in Bill de Blasio's case, you know, the largest city in the country. Yeah. And they're saying, like, he is a mayor of a pretty small college town and has held no other elected office. And this guy has raised $7 million and is now this sort of national candidate who really has a chance in the race. And who benefits from running even if he doesn't become the nominee.

Right. That's the more cynical version of this, which is you run for office to get a cabinet appointment. Or worse, you run to get a book deal. Or if you're Herman Cain, you get a book deal and you get named to the Fed later. Right? Just because you run for president and you raise your profile. And I'll tell you. Now, I don't, I'm not making that accusation by the Democrats, but certainly that

was the case for most of the Republicans who ran for president. They did it to make money down the road. I'm not making the exact accusation either. I really hope that's not true because I do not have... I do not respect as much, I will just say, people who are running who are thinking,

I'm not going to win, but I'm just running because I want to raise my profile. And i don't and look i think like pete budaj is not running because he wants to raise his profile i think he really wants to do this you know but i think if you're if you're running for president if you do this you really have to think that there is a path for you and that you want to run and maybe all these people do and i think the reason they do is for all these reasons made up they're like all i need is a couple big moments you know where i take off and then if i can just get to that debate stage and show people you know what i am what my message is and what my story is then there i go and they're looking at the field too by the way and they're saying um we have two

front runners joe biden and bernie sanders one in the race one not in the race yet and they're not like traditionally super strong front front runners like hillary was in 2015 2016 you know they are they're both pulling it like between 25 and 30 percent you know biden's support has ticked down a little bit bernie's has stayed solid um but they're not so strong and no one else and then after that you've got kamala warren, Beto, and now Buttigieg, all sort of in the mix at around eight to 10%. And then a whole bunch of other, you're looking at that field and you're like, nothing is scaring me away. Right. And I also just, they're human beings. And I just think we don't know how loud the applause was in their minds in the shower while giving their inaugurals. I think they must be extraordinary speeches that these people are

giving to themselves. I mean, look, I think Howard Schultz is a good example of someone who was practicing running for president in his mind for a very, very long time. And only discovered how hard it was when he started saying words out loud to other human beings. That's a whole other garbage can of coffee grounds. Howard Schultz, who got his candidacy unraveled in one interview with Ali Velshi, thinks that he's belonged on the world stage. What a clown. Well, Ali Velshi wasn't who was interviewing him in the shower. But, yeah.

I mean, just to... But everyone should run, and we'll see what happens. Disclaimer. We have no idea. Disclaimer. And honestly, I have no fucking idea what's going to happen in this primary. I don't know about you guys, but every single day... Now I got it locked.

Every single day I read the news, I'm like, nothing would surprise me in this primary. Some say chaos is a pit. I think chaos is a ladder, John. When we come back to Tommy's interview with Nobel Peace Prize nominee Amanda Nguyen. Amanda Nguyen. I am honored to have in the Crooked Media HQ Amanda Nguyen.

She's the founder and CEO of RISE, a non-governmental civil rights organization. She was the power behind the Sexual Assault Survivors Rights Act, one of 23 bills, two, three bills, Michael Jordan number of bills to pass unanimously through U.S. Congress. In 2013, she graduated from Harvard University, where she studied astrophysics and was the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize nominee. Amanda, it's great to see you again. Thank you. Last time I saw you, we met for an hour about how you figured out to do something most elected officials can't do, which is pass laws. Yeah.

But then I buttonholed you for like 30 minutes to talk about something I saw on Cosmos, which was recently taken off Netflix, which is very upsetting. But you were like going to see a spaceship launch that day. Virgin Galactic. How was it? I mean, it was amazing. All space launches are amazing. Have you been to one?

No. I've seen them on TV. You have to go. We have to go. It's so smart that they put cameras all over them. I mean, Elon Musk putting his Tesla on the spaceship was just brilliant. Yes. So you're basically, you're on the track to be an astronaut.

I want to be. That's my main dream. So this whole like writing civil rights stuff, it's like i'm trying to do a blueprint so that i can get to space okay cool we'll get to space at the end um so i think if people want to learn even more about the work you're doing at rise um you did an awesome awesome crooked conversation with julissa arce that gets into a ton of detail uh but there's some new stuff as of this week that i want to cover so we'll probably do a little less, but let's start there in the work Rise does because it's so foundational to what you're doing. What's Rise and how are you able to pass more pieces of legislation than like anybody thought

possible? By taking our egos and shoving it somewhere. Okay. Okay. So Rise is a civil rights nonprofit and I started it because needed civil rights, and nobody was going to write it for me. So after my rape at Harvard, I discovered a broken criminal justice system. Rape kits in Massachusetts before my law passed were destroyed before the statute of limitations. There was a huge double standard, so convicted rapists had the right to hold on to it for the duration of their conviction. That is outrageous.

Yeah. The other double standard is that other types of class A violent felonies like murder, they never have their evidence destroyed. But rape does. And I thought that was unfair. And so I realized I had a choice. I could accept the injustice or rewrite the law. One of these things is a lot better than the other. So I rewrote it.

When I started RISE, it was a team of us. And we sought to pass the Sexual Assault Survivor Bill of Rights through the United States Congress. People thought we were a joke. They were like, look at these 20-something-year-olds. You have no money. You have no power. You have no connections. And then we did it.

It's amazing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, you have this astrophysics background. You get science. You get math. You're organized. Like, how did you apply some of the things you're passionate about to the work you're doing? Because I feel like you kind of hacked the system in a way that a lot of people talk about but few people really do.

Totally. So, for us, data and being data-driven is extremely important. I feel like you kind of hacked the system in a way that a lot of people talk about, but few people really do. Totally. So for us, data and being data-driven is extremely important. And when we walked into a members of Congress office, we knew every single vote that they've ever done on this, everything they've said, and also their Cook PVI score. That's awesome. And it was not only the moral case for why they should do this, but also the political case or why anyone should do this. So it came with a lot of strategy. But when we passed at that time, we became the 21st bill in modern U.S. history to do so unanimously. And the statistic for that is point zero one six percent. But the most remarkable thing wasn't that. It was what happened after. So when President Obama signed it in 2016, we heard from over a million people who reached out to say, hey,

I'm having these issues in my own community too. And can you help us, me, pen my own civil rights into existence? And so we sought to replicate that success. And I created a theory of organizing called Hoponomics. I love Hoponomics. Thank you. It's part game design theory and then part national security theory. And what it does is it gamifies the process of passing a law. And over the past 21 months, we've passed 21 laws unanimously. We've trained over 200 organizers to do that. And it covers about 40 million people's civil rights.

That's incredible. It's like, it's a truly remarkable accomplishment. Thanks. So this kind of blends into your announcement for this week. Do you think your theory of the case could be borrowed by someone who is passionate about criminal justice reform or fill in the blank? That's the whole point, right? So, so much of politics isn't about facts. It's about how do you talk to irrational human beings about making them believe it's in their best interest, not only logically, but emotionally as well. And that's exactly what we've done.

So we've taken now the knowledge and resources we've amassed over these 21 laws, and we're taking it to the next step. So we've built America's premier civil rights accelerator, and we call it Rise Justice Labs. So just a couple of days ago, you launched this project. It's this incubator for people who want to build a movement around the cause that they care about. So how is Rise Justice Labs going to work? Yeah.

So here's how it works. In cities across America, there are umbrella organizations that give seed funding to tech entrepreneurs. So when a tech entrepreneur has an idea, based on the merit of their idea, they can pitch to VC firms and get seed funding, mentorship. And that doesn't exist for civil rights until now. So what we do is we took a social entrepreneurship lens to grassroots organizing. When an activist or an organizer wants to pass a law, they can apply to us. And if they get accepted, we'll give them seed funding, training, access to professional services like lawyers and community. And essentially, we're covering the opportunity cost of someone starting up a social movement. That is such that's so important because I've heard you talk about this.

But I think you saw this after Parkland, where if a student who survived one of the attacks dared to tweet something about finding some joy in their day-to-day life, they were smacked down. It was like, how dare you enjoy what you're doing? There's this sense, I think, that activism has to be punitive for the individuals involved. And that's totally crazy. It's unfair. Yeah, I don't believe in martyrdom, right? And actually, I'm so glad that you brought them up

because we've actually started Rise Justice Labs under the radar for the past eight months. And the first team we're so proud to work with are the survivors, alumni, and friends, other people who work with the folks from Parkland, the survivors of Majority Stoneman Douglas High. That's amazing. So when I think about how effective you've been and how effective they've been, it's like a Transformers coming together. What are they looking to learn from you and your organization? Yeah, so this group of young people, incredible young people founded by a young man named Robert Shentrup. So he lost his sister Carmen Shentrup in the shooting. I'll never forget it. So he

came to me and said, I just want to make sure that politicians, I don't care what party they are, will be able to be safe in voting for gun violence prevention because I just don't want to lose my other sister to gun violence. And that kind of organizing, that kind of attitude is what it takes. And so over the past eight months, they've been incubated at RISE full time. They've gone through our Hoponomics training. And they are now in 15 states. They have met with President Trump in the Oval Office. Wow. Good for them. Yeah. Yeah, it was incredible. And with Democratic House leadership. And just last month, Robert testified in the Colorado State House for a bill they're supporting called ERPO.

And that bill passed and it's on its way to the governor's desk. That is remarkable. God, the antidote to being frustrated with Washington is to get out to states and see work like that happening. Well, look, this is a time of frustration, of political tribalism and of waning faith in our democracy. faith in our democracy. And I don't think that there's ever been a more vital moment in our history for people to understand that they hold the power. I am so sick of politicians who just for retweets have these reduced soundbites instead of making steadfast policy. And for people who want an alternative to, you know, giving money to candidates, right, there are only 535 seats within Congress. You can run for them. You can also run for local office. But also, if you don't want to run, or if you lose and you still want to serve in some way, there is a path for you to make change.

You see, like if I was a member of Congress, I'd be the most successful one. I've passed 21 laws unanimously. And the only reason I was able to do that is by being outside of that political fray. Right, right. So the other thing I think, the other tension I see a lot, mostly online, because that's where we all live, is what's real activism versus hashtag activism? Ah, yes. So I kind of think it's a false choice, right? Like marching works, sit-in works. But I imagine if Dr. King had the social media tools we have today,

he would have used those as well, right? So where's the balance? What creative things have you seen young people do that merge the history with what we can do today? Well, I think our century's industrial revolution is digital and that the path, you know, the networks of distribution are absolutely social media. If I go to a celebrity who has millions and millions of followers and ask them to tweet about calling in something, those members of Congress will be hearing those phone calls, right?

And so hashtag activism, along with other forms of organizing, are all valid. But at the end of the day, what is it that you're trying to accomplish? And for us at RISE, we, I didn't have the political luxury of a cathartic performance. Like, what I mean by that is I needed to work with people from all sorts of walks of life and people I didn't agree with in order to pass laws. Because for me, in order for a healthy democracy to function, its citizens need to be able to hash things out. And we have, I think, in this moment of extreme, extreme toxic political tribalism lost that. And so for folks who still want to make a change, there is a way, and they can go ahead and apply to us at RISE.

Yeah. So you talk about the tribalism and the way it plays out in the media. I mean, the Brett Kavanaugh nomination, like I almost don't even want to, it was so awful, right? Because you had this incredibly, you know, believable,, compelling, emotional testimony for Dr. Blasey Ford, followed by a fucking temper tantrum from Lindsey Graham. And that seemed to inspire their base more than Dr. Ford's testimony got Democrats to turn out and oppose the nomination. And that broke my heart. I just couldn't believe we lived in a country where that is how someone would respond to trauma and like that. Right. And then more recently, we have a very different debate that was similar tones about Joe Biden and like what

is appropriate and, you know, whether, you know, whether something falls short of sexual assault or misconduct, whether making someone uncomfortable, like how we talk about those sorts of issues in the public square. So like, I guess I'm trying to figure out what's the best outcome we can get from the conversations that we have publicly now about all of these issues. about all of these issues? First, I think America, and to the world as an extent, is going through mass public trauma together. For the first time in the news, we're seeing very deeply rooted traumatic things

that were stigmatic ones being played out over and over 24-7. And that is affecting the way that people are responding not only to politics, but in their everyday lives. The second thing is that regardless of the political spectrum, what at least I've observed from the things that have gone on is that it's no longer do you believe survivors. It is if survivors matter. if survivors matter. And the whole point that I'm trying to show not only survivors, but everyday people, is that not only do you matter, but you have agency, right? We're demystifying the process of passing a law and trying to give people a roadmap because people are just fed up with investing or putting their hopes into politicians that

maybe will do some things for them. There's a profit model in politics of people paying a premium to lobbyists and consultants for access to research connections, and maybe it'll work out. But for us, there are people on the ground in these communities. Look, it's my deep belief that the people who have the solutions to the world's most pressing problems are the people who live the problem every day.

And those people should be at the drafting table too. So why just cut out the middleman, right? Do it ourself. I love it. So if you're listening, say you're at home right now, you're listening to this, you're fired up by your success. You want to get involved. You want to apply to rise at justice labs. How do you do that? And what do you want to hear for them if they're going to go from

applicant to accept it? Cause I imagine you're going to get a lot of people trying to be a part of this. Yeah. So folks can go to rise now.us and apply. And what we're looking for are people who are passionate, who have really big ideas about how to change the world and who have what it takes. And here's what it takes. Somebody who can compromise, right? One of the final questions, I'll give this away. One of the final questions that we always ask any person who applies to RISE is if you were to meet President Trump, what would you say? Oh, good question. Yeah. And if the answer is anything short of respect, they're not accepted.

Because at the end of the day, we have to compromise. We have to work with people. That's what democracy and our legislative process demands. And I still have faith in our legislative process. That's why we're being able to, you know, pass all these laws. That's amazing. Okay. One space question. Okay. The path from today for you to becoming an astronaut, how many years is that and what do you have to do? Um, so that's a really both, um, exciting and complicated question because there are multiple routes. Obviously, so I used to work at NASA and that would be my dream to be a mission specialist on one of their deep space missions, hopefully to Mars. Yeah. But it's much more likely for me to go to space through a private space program.

And there are a ton of companies who are exploring and making a lot of innovation headway into private space. So I am really excited to be able to contribute in both ways. You're bullish on private space? Yes, definitely. I've literally seen it with my own eyes. The last time I was here, I headed from you to Virgin Galactic and saw the first woman ever to fly in a commercial space flight into space and come back down. That is so cool. Yeah.

Amanda, it is so inspiring to talk to you. Thank you so much for coming in. Everyone should apply. Yes. This is such a good idea. We need to see this replicated all across the country because that's the only way we're going to make some progress. Yeah.

No, everyone should. No one is powerless when we come together. Get in the game, people. Thanks for talking to me. Yeah, of course. Thanks to Amanda Nguyen for joining us. And we'll see you in Boston. We'll see you in Boston.

The rest of you will hear us from Boston on Friday morning. Still some tickets for Love and Relief in Boston on Wednesday. Just come say hi. Snap up those tickets.