Pod Save America - Gaetz Goes Down

Episode Date: November 22, 2024

Matt Gaetz is out as Trump's attorney general pick after the mounting questions about past interactions with young women cost him the support of key senators. Nominated in his place: former Florida AG Pam Bondi. Meanwhile, House Republicans have decided their top priority is prohibiting incoming Congresswoman Sarah McBride from using women's bathrooms in the Capitol. Jon and Dan break down what the Gaetz debacle says about Trump's Cabinet picks, his rocky relationships with Senate Republicans, what the bathroom stunt means for LGBTQ rights, and how McBride and her colleagues should respond. Then, Congresswoman Marie Gluesenkamp Perez talks with Jon about how she pulled off another win in her rural, Trump-supporting district, and what Democrats can learn from her success. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

Welcome to Pod Save America, I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On today's show, House Republicans spend a few days obsessing over who gets to use which bathrooms on Capitol Hill. New election data gives us a clearer picture of what really happened in the presidential race. And later, they've got MTG, we've got MGP.

Congresswoman Marie, you know. I appreciate it. Credit to Reed for that one. Congresswoman Marie Glusinkamp Perez chats with me about how she pulled off another win in a pretty Trumpy district in rural Washington state. But first, I don't know what this country's coming to, Dan, but apparently the woke mob has decided

that you can't run the Justice Department if that department has investigated you for participating in multiple drug-fuel fueled orgies where you paid for sex with multiple women, at least one of whom was 17. What, what, what are we America? This is why Trump won right here. This sort of censorship. That's right.

Matt Gaetz announced in a tweet that he has withdrawn from consideration to be the next attorney general saying that he didn't want his sexual misconduct to be a distraction for Donald Trump, who knows a thing or two about sexual misconduct. The New York Times' Jonathan Swan reports that Gates told people that there were at least four Republican senators he believed would never vote for him after conversations with their staffs, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Mitch McConnell, welcome to the resistance, and John Curtis of Utah.

Who's John Curtis of Utah, you might ask? Someone who I Googled when I saw that tweet. He's gonna be taking Mitt Romney's seat now that Mitt Romney is retiring. What do you think, Dan? Anything to glean from this episode about how Republicans in Congress might handle Trump for the next four years or is this mostly about?

Who Matt Gaetz is and what he's done and is alleged to have done? Matt Gaetz has an amazing and possibly historic combination of several qualities one Massively unqualified for the job his legal experience basically is a couple of years in a corporate law firm He is deeply unpopular with all the colleagues who would vote for him. Members of the House and Senate seem to hate him more than almost any other Republican. And as you pointed out, he is someone who would be the first person in history, I assume, to go from being the target of a Department of Justice investigation to becoming the head of the Department of Justice.

And that was probably a bridge too far for at least four brave Republicans, one of whom we learned about 35 seconds ago. I think the more, what is more telling is not that Matt Gaetz went down, it's it appears that about 90% of sitting Republican senators were prepared to vote for him despite the fact that we have known about these very credible allegations about Gaetz paying a minor for sex for months now. Like that's the thing, they were all gonna vote for him. Like the fact that he was gonna get most votes is wild.

If you'd step back, like if you can detach your brain from our like Trump era, like that's insane. That is a completely insane thing. Yeah, I mean, we don't know how many votes he would have gotten. Like we know that those four at least felt, or at least their staffs felt comfortable enough

talking to Gates and JD Vance, who was walking him around the hill over the last couple of days. I think this is where he started realizing that maybe he wasn't gonna get confirmed. There could have been a few more as well. Apparently it was Donald Trump who told Gates in a phone call, I don't think the votes are there for you

and I don't think they're gonna be there for you. So that was that, Gates wanted to keep fighting. But it said something to me that Trump didn't wanna keep fighting for the votes or didn't wanna bully those senators or didn't wanna try the recess appointment thing. I don't think that says something good about Trump. I'm just kind of interested in why he, why he came to that conclusion.

He doesn't like to lose fights. So he often quits before the, uh, before it gets to that point. Yeah. Yeah. Do you think that other nominees can go down here? Yeah. I think Gates dropping out is bad news for Pete Hegseth, Tulsi Gabbard and RFK Jr.

Cause you know, you have, there's, there's obviously like this group of four people is bad news for Pete Hegseth, Tulsi Gabbard and RFK Jr. Cause you know, you have, there's obviously like this group of four people who voted against or possibly going to vote against Gates. You have some combination of people like Mitch McConnell who are in the YOLO phase of their careers who Trump can't really do anything to them per se. You have folks like Tom Tillis who are up next time, who are thinking about, who have to try to find this balance between, you don't want to be a Trump

toady, but you also don't want to piss Trump off so much that you get a primary challenge and these folks can maybe vote against one of Trump's nominees, but they can't vote against all of them. So the fact that Gates went down without a vote means that a bunch of folks have a free vote if they choose to use it against one of these people they find unqualified. And the person who probably is now at most risk is Pete Hickseth. He is, by traditional definitions at least, phenomenally unqualified to manage the Pentagon. But he is, his, the horrific accounts of the sexual assault allegation against him were

not getting as much attention because of the goat rodeo that was the Gates nomination. And that's gonna change now. And so he's gonna get a ton of scrutiny. He's gonna have to start having to answer some real questions about what happened with that allegation, but also how he would run a Pentagon

when he thinks that women shouldn't serve in combat and how he would manage millions of employees. And so I think the spotlight goes to him and the spotlight's not really where you wanna be in this process. You kinda wanna draft behind someone else. Jonathan Chait, who's now at the Atlantic, his piece there is about Hegseth

and he read all of his books. Pete Hegseth apparently has three or four books that he's written. I'll just read from the piece. The clearest through line of all three books is the cross application of Hegseth's wartime mentality to his struggle against domestic opponents. American Crusade, that's one of his books, calls for the categorical defeat of the left with the goal of utter annihilation without which America cannot and will not survive. And then here's

another quote, our American crusade is not about literal swords and our fight is not with guns yet. Emphasis his. Like just, I know the, the sexual assault allegations are going to get, uh, rightfully a ton of focus, but like a guy in charge of our military whose loyalty is only to Donald Trump and who despises Democrats so intensely with a president who has talked about using the military against his political opponents. I really hope that's a big focus of the hearings because if anything if anything should cause Pete Hegseth to go down, it's that the guy

running the military hates half the country and thinks that we're in a crusade, uh, that's not about guns yet. I think it's, I think Tommy made this point on the Tuesday pod that I think for a lot of the public arguing that someone who served like Pete Hegseth did, who has the accommodation that Pete Hegseth has, is not qualified to run a Pentagon, is not going to make sense to a lot of people.

Now, if you know a lot about how the Pentagon runs in the massive management challenge it is, the Weekend Anchor at Fox, it does not seem like a compelling resume, but for the broader public, it's not our best argument. But his views, I think, are very much an important part of this. And you laid out his sort of his loyalty to Trump, his approach to anyone he disagrees with, his willingness to apparently use the military and potentially weaponry to win political disputes. Also, it's just not for nothing. Someone who doesn't think women should serve in combat running the Pentagon at a time

when a significant portion of our fighting force are women is quite problematic and awkward and challenging. And he should be forced to defend that and explain that point of view in the hearings that he has if he makes it that far. And by the way, not just problematic, also problematic for our national security.

Yeah, that's what I mean. That's what I mean. For how you actually run a Pentagon when you believe such a thing, right? When so many of the people who work under your employee are people you don't believe should even be able to come to work that day. Yeah, the military doesn't have too many people

signing up right now. That's not the problem. We have a recruitment challenge in the US military at a time of danger all around the world. All right, breaking news. Trump's got his next attorney general, or at least what he hopes is the next attorney general, Pam Bondi, Dan.

Remember Pam Bondi? Barely. I just had to chat to you, Pat Bondi. What did Pat Bondi do in the first Trump term? Pam, Pam. Pam, Pam, Pam, Pam Bondi. Yeah, she's like from the first season of Donald Trump. She was attorney General of Florida.

She has been a long time, she's been close with Trump forever. I think most recently she led the legal arm of the America First Policy Institute, which is just a Trump nonprofit. And yeah, there was a controversy over the fact that she was supposed to investigate or she was charged with investigating Trump University, but Trump had like given her a donation to her campaign for attorney general in Florida.

I feel like I should shout out our producer, Saul, for pointing that out. Saul told us that, Saul reminded us of that. It sounds like such a quaint scandal these days. Yes, yes. Just garden variety bribery. Remember when that was a big deal? That was what she tried to, she led the bunch of other Republican attorney generals trying to overturn the affordable care act. Didn't quite figure that one out. Anyway, that's Pam Bondi. We'll have more to say about her as the days go on here, but that's all we got for now. She's currently a lobbyist for a Trump fundraiser.

She lobbied for Amazon and GM and Uber. So we have another lobbyist along with Suzy Wiles, and that's that. I'd like to make a process point here, which is usually the process for picking a cabinet nominee involves weeks of rigorous vetting of their personal financial statements, public statements, voting record, an FBI background check. We are, we are recording this right now at 4 PM Pacific. Matt Gates dropped out at 9 AM Pacific. So I'm going to just venture a guess that they did not do thorough vetting on Pam Bondi

and we're gonna learn some new things as this process goes forward. Yeah, I mean, she wasn't on the short list when he ended up choosing Matt Gaetz. It was just a bunch of other dudes that he found boring. He called them stiffs to Elon Musk, apparently. So she definitely just got to be in the last couple days. So we'll see.

Good luck, Pam Bondi. What happens to Matt Gaetz now? Trump says he's excited to see what he does in the future. There was some speculation that perhaps Ron DeSantis would appoint him to fill Marco Rubio's Senate seat when Rubio, Rubio, who looks like, looks like he's going to be cruising to confirmation. Democrats going to be bending over backwards to vote for him. And DeSantis apparently said no, his office said no, he's not putting Matt Gaetz in that Senate seat. Cause he's reserving it for Laura Trump.

Yeah, that's right. Yeah. So there you go. And it doesn't seem like he's going to go back to Congress either. He could. I think that's notable. He could, but he sort of, um, then he has to, uh, deal with the House Ethics Committee again, if he sort of, then he has to deal with the House Ethics Committee again, if he goes back to Congress. Yeah, I mean, I guess he could go back because just so people understand,

he resigned from this Congress, but he was elected to the next Congress. He did put in his letter that he was also not planning to fill his seat the next Congress, but that's not legally binding, so he could still do it. And Governor DeSantis has not yet called the special election for that seat. But as you point out,

he would have to deal with the ethics report. And theoretically, although I find this hard to imagine in this Congress, some sort of potential expulsion resolution over the findings of that ethics report. And since he dropped out with new allegations coming out, like who knows how bad that report is or what else could become a part of it before this is over. The other thing he could do is he could end up in somewhere in the Trump

administration in a non-Senate confirmable job, but he could be a senior advisor in the white house, he could be a senior advisor in sort of sort of nebulous role at the department of justice. He could still end up at DOJ doing all the things you just worried about. Or the last option, I think probably the most likely is, he starts a podcast. I thought you were gonna say runs for governor of Florida when DeSantis is on.

No. I guess, I guess why choose? Why would you do that when you can have real power like a podcast? I was gonna say, you know, there's someone by the name of Gavin Newsom, who has a big job as governor, who hosts a pod called Politicking.

So, you know, it's happened before. So in case you were worried that we lost one person accused of sexual misconduct from Trump's cabinet, he's looking to fill his cabinet with a couple more. You mentioned Pete Hegseth. Health and Human Services Secretary nominee RFK Jr. has been accused of sexual assault by a former babysitter for his kids. That person was speaking up this week. Education Secretary nominee Linda McMahon was sued for allegedly enabling sexual abuse

of children. What it like, he just, he's really going for it, Donald Trump, right? He's just like, I was found liable for sexual abuse and I'm in the White House, so I guess I can just nominate as many people as I want. I think he legitimately finds kinship with other people accused of the same things he was. I mean, the way he's defended, uh, like Harvey Weinstein, Roger Ailes, you know, other people accused of similar things. Yeah, crosses party lines for him.

Um, one reason Republican senators may not find the courage to oppose other Trump nominees, threats from the White House. On Wednesday evening, John Karl at ABC News tweeted out that a Trump advisor told him on background, quote, there's votes coming. And if you are on the wrong side of the vote, you're buying yourself a primary. That is all. And there's a guy named Elon Musk who's going to finance it. The president gets to decide his cabinet.

No one else. That's just the way it is. Is this what the people voted for, Dan? Trump's billionaire co-president funding primary challenges to knock off Republicans who don't let Trump fill his cabinet with his preferred collection of kooks and predators? Not to be that guy, but that's not how it is, right? It's very explicitly not how it is that the president gets

to pick and no one else gets to have input. It is quite the opposite in fact. But I think let's just take a beat on the fact that you have the world's richest man who spent reportedly over $100 million to help Donald Trump get elected. Musk has massive financial interests in various decisions made by the Trump administration and Congress in terms of tax rates, space policy,

defense contracts. And he is dictating who gets to serve in the government, what laws get passed by potentially dumping unlimited amounts of money into primary challenges. This is to me, it is just an epic combination of corruption, bribery, extortion, all in one place. And I do think that this is, as Democrats sort of think about ways in which we are going to mount our fight against Trump and the Republicans

in the coming months and years. Targeting this sort of corruption is high on the list because this is what everyone hates about politics. It is huge, massive money dictating what is in the interest of the rich and the powerful. And if we can make that case and make it credibly, I think we have a very good shot to win back a lot of the voters that we lost in 2024.

Yeah. I mean, Elon Musk is the richest man in the world and he's used his money now to buy access, buy power, and also be able to punish people who don't do what he wants by dumping money into a primary challenge? Even Republicans? I mean, it's absurd. On that note about democratic strategy, like there's going to be a lot of these nominees,

it's going to be a bunch of hearings, it's going to be a lot of noise around these hearings. If you're, you know, like in Chuck Schumer's office or democratic leadership in the Senate, like what do you think in terms of a sort of strategy to figure out the best way to oppose these nominees or pick which nominees to really have a fight over? I think it's worth just remembering that no democratic senator has an obligation to vote for any of these people. Right. There's no, you don't have to do it out of comedy or sticking to norms or bipartisanship, just because you're like, I'm gonna vote against Gabbard, Hegseth, McMahon,

that I therefore have to vote for Elise Stefanik and Marco Rubio. Or because I run on the treadmill next to Marco Rubio, I have to vote for him. I don't really care if they do or they don't, but there is no reason that you have to do it. It's also worth remembering that we have pretty limited control over whether the most egregious Trump nominees

pass or not, right? We don't have the Senate. We should do our best job in our hearings to bring out, make the arguments against them, bring out the information that everyone should have. But it's going to be come down to four Republican senators every single time. And I do think that just like screaming from the rooftops

that all of them are the worst gets lost and will not matter to people. And I think what really matters is, and I think there, cause there are sort of two strategies. There's how you defeat them. And then there's how you use them to make a case to the broader electorate that we need to change who controls Congress in 2026.

And the way to do that is you have to stitch together a narrative about who these people are and what it says about the Republican Party. And it really is in my mind, cronyism and corruption. It's a bunch of rich people who are serving their own interests and serving Donald Trump's interest at the expense of the American people's interest. And that's sort of, that's the thread

between all of these folks, I think. Yeah, I think they are a bunch of sort of extreme, corrupt cronies, and that's not what people... I just, I think you gotta keep going back to like, what did people vote for? People voted for a government to like, help them afford basic necessities and to improve their lives.

And they didn't vote for a bunch of fucking kooks or someone who wants to like turn the military against American citizens, right? All right, so that's the Senate. Over in the House, they are focused like a laser on bringing down costs by keeping a close eye on who's using which bathroom. On Monday, Congresswoman Nancy Mace introduced a resolution to ban trans women from using the women's restrooms and locker rooms on the House side of the U.S. Capitol, a resolution she said was specifically targeted at incoming Congresswoman Sarah McBride of Delaware. Mace, who just three years ago said that no one should be discriminated against and that she supported LGBTQ rights and equality in part because she's been around friends and family who are gay,

lesbian, and transgender. Those exact words were on her website. Mace has now apparently decided that it's easier to get media attention and raise money by obsessing over where everyone pees. She succeeded at getting Speaker Mike Johnson to put out a statement saying that single-sex facilities on Capitol grounds are, quote, reserved for individuals of that biological sex, that members have their own private bathrooms, and that there are unisex public bathrooms in the buildings.

The 34-year-old McBride, who never asked to be the center of a debate over people's rights, put out a statement that reads in part, quote, I'm not here to fight about bathrooms. I'm here to fight for Delawareans and to bring down costs facing families. Like all members, I will follow the rules as outlined by Speaker Johnson,

even if I disagree with them. She goes on to say that every member of Congress was elected because voters see something in them that they value, that she has loved seeing those qualities and all her future colleagues, and she hopes they will do the same for her. Sarah's been on the show before, she'll be on again soon. We did check in with her on Thursday.

She said she is mostly focused on getting ready for the job at House orientation. She's hiring staff. She also said that obviously she's human and this would be hard on anyone, but that she's really heartened by the support she's received from the democratic caucus and even in private from some Republican members and their staff.

What did you think of Sarah's statement and just this whole fucking mess? The other statement was beautifully written and very powerful. And I think it's worth just stepping back from the politics for a second, just thinking about this on a human level, right? I know Sarah a little bit. She's from my hometown.

She's an incredibly impressive person, but just imagine she accomplishes her dream of getting elected to Congress. And she goes there and on your first day of work, no matter where it is, right? When you walk into that new office, it's incredibly nerve wracking. Now imagine that new office is Congress

and imagine that you are the first transgender person to go there. And the first thing Congress does is target you personally and just in the cruelest, most pointless way just to score political points. And imagine like that how that makes you feel as a person and how to do that. And I think just whatever people think about her approach and her strategy to this, just I think she deserves a lot of grace. She deserves as much grace as she has given everyone else in that statement of hers.

Just an incredibly, just incredibly brave way to respond to something that's absolutely disgusting. Yeah, I mean, I think it's incredibly difficult to deal with what she had to deal with on her first day on the job from her colleagues, from someone like Nancy Mace, who clearly is not doing it out of some deep seated belief that she has, as we can tell, because she had just the opposite kind of language on her website a couple of years ago, but she's just doing it to get attention for herself because that's what Nancy Mace does.

And dealing with that is hard enough. had just the opposite kind of language on her website a couple of years ago, but she's just doing it to get attention for herself, because that's what Nancy Mays does. And dealing with that is hard enough. Like finding the courage and the discipline and the grace to respond the way that she did. Like I don't know how many people in politics would do that, especially in today's political environment. And so I was just, you know, I was blown away by her statement and how she's handled this. And it's hard to believe that she

was able to do that. It's also, I think, very compelling and politically. Like, I think her strategy is just what she really believes, which is, and she said this before, she's like, I'm not here as a spokesperson for an entire cause. I am here to represent the people of Delaware and to do work. And I don't think she wants to be entirely defined by her gender identity. She just doesn't. And, you know, other people may feel differently,

but she wants to go to Congress to do work. I think focusing on that is going to be difficult when she's targeted like this, but it's just, you know, thank God we have people like her who are there and are gonna approach it this way. And I know that after she did this, there were some trans rights activists who've been saying that they are disappointed in Sarah McBride for giving in on the issue.

That's the polite phrasing instead of fighting it. And I would just say, like, I get the frustration and everyone is entitled to their feelings and their beliefs and that are based on their own experiences and their own life journeys. But if Sarah McBride decided to respond by what fighting, putting up a fight on this, like she's not going to change Mike Johnson's mind. Democrats don't have power in the house. They don't get to set the rules.

And so any fight that she put up may make activists feel better. Maybe it even makes her feel better. Maybe it makes other Democrats feel better, but it doesn't do anything. It doesn't advance the cause. And whether you agree with her strategy or not, it's a strategy that like she deeply believes in, and I do think she has earned the right as someone who has won the seat and is going to Congress to do this the way that she wants to do it. And I think that the accusations that she is somehow abandoning trans activists

or the community or whatever else, like if you were in that position, what would you do knowing that you have limited power, that you're there to do a job, and that you are trying to build support not only for transgender Americans, but for the policies and beliefs and proposals that you came to Congress to enact so you could help people. And so I would just ask everyone to please,

like give her some grace on this issue. I'm not, you know, I'm not certainly not the right person to say who's right and who's wrong here to say that the people who have a different view than her approach are wrong for feeling that way. Of course not. I think from her perspective, she one understood this was a fight she could not win,

but just absolutely, there's not a single Republican, if there was ever a vote, there's nothing Republicans would like more than to have this specific vote. And if you had it, no Republicans voting with her. And for reasons that are not particularly admirable, a lot of her Democratic colleagues would love to vote the other way,

or would love to avoid the vote at all costs. And having that vote probably sets the cause back in a lot of ways. And I think she is playing the long game in two ways. One is she understands, and more Democrats need to understand this, that outrage is the coin of the realm in right-wing politics.

And what Nancy Mace wants more than anything else is for her to respond with outrage. So she can then weaponize that outrage on her behalf for more attention, more money. And she's denying Nancy Mace and Mike Johnson what they want most. And that's denying Nancy Mace and Mike Johnson what they want most. And that's almost always a good strategy. And then second, for her and the long-term cause here,

her view is to do the best job she can. And she's gonna have the best chance to do that job by exactly what she said in her statement. It's by doing the work she was elected to do. Focusing on that, doing a good job, being a good colleague, building consensus so she can pass more bills to that and to be there for a long time and achieve a lot of things because that will be what is remembered, right?

That is how minds can be changed. And I think she also recognizes, and it's something that I think Democrats are trying to recognize right now. The country is not where we want it to be right now on accepting transgender Americans and standing up for their rights and their dignity. And we want to get the country there, most of the country there. And figuring out how to do that is very difficult.

And I don't pretend that like anyone has the right answer or the wrong answer, but she has a theory of how to get the country there, right? And I think like giving her the chance to play that out, I think she deserves that chance. I think she deserves that chance. And you know, I don't think this means that Democrats can't pick fights over this. For example, AOC offered a very different response

than Sarah McBride, but one that I also thought was quite effective. Here's AOC. What Nancy Mace and what Speaker Johnson are doing are endangering all women and girls, because if you ask them what is your plan on how to enforce this they won't come up with an answer and what it inevitably results in are women and girls who are primed for assault because they want because people are gonna want to check their private parts in suspecting who is trans and who is cis and who's doing what. People have a right to express themselves to dress how they want and to be who they are and who is cis and who's doing what. People have a right to express themselves,

to dress how they want and to be who they are. And if a woman doesn't look woman enough to a Republican, they want to be able to inspect her genitals to use a bathroom? It's disgusting. And everybody, no matter how you feel on this issue, should reject it completely. What are they doing?

They're doing this so that Nancy Mase can make a buck and send a text and fundraise off an email. What'd you think of that? Love it. Just going on offense in the right way. And like playing, this is one of the things that has been effective in some of the other battles against these really gross bathroom bills in other states and some of the bans on sports participation is playing out exactly how it's gonna work, right? And laying out in detail and forcing them to defend what may sound appealing to some group of people on the surface or sound common sense on the surface.

When you get to the reality of it, it falls apart. And so I fully applaud what AOC said there. I also think that she put that response in a frame that we have seen work well against these Republican led intrusions into people's private lives. And after Dobbs, I think we saw in even deep red areas of this country that when you talk about government should not be involved in people's private lives, you know, that should not come between someone and their doctor,

it should not be in people's bedrooms, and it should not be in people's bathrooms, right? And what AOC was trying to say there is wherever you are in this issue, whatever you think about this issue, like just leave us the fuck alone. Right? And like the government shouldn't and members of Congress shouldn't be like spending their time obsessing over who goes to what bathroom when we are like sent to Congress to try to make people's lives better. How is that making anyone's lives better?

Nancy Mays getting a fundraising email out there and getting more attention in the Republican caucus so she can get a few more fucking Fox News hits. Like, that's not making people's lives better. Like just leave people alone, leave people alone. So I think it was like a really effective way to frame the issue that reminded me of how Democrats very successfully framed abortion in the post-Obs era. Well, all these other fights are going on.

We are quietly getting more data about who voted in the election, in what numbers, and where. Navigator Research just released a post-election survey of 5,000 voters and swing voters. We've also got most of the complete county-by-county results in most states and most states that are done counting, California, we're still counting here. Never gonna stop. Never gonna stop. And a few of the other states have not just finished

all the tabulating. But anyway, the county-by-county results can help us make an educated guess about how changes in turnout affected the race. Let's start with the Navigator research. Anything jump out at you from that? Sure. What was interesting with the Navigator poll

is that they identified a group of quote unquote swing voters. These are people who considered both candidates over a fairly recent period. And Trump won those voters by eight points. Now, winning candidate wins swing voters. These are people who considered both candidates over a fairly recent period. And Trump won those voters by eight points. Now, winning candidate wins swing voters is not a particularly groundbreaking insight, but what is interesting in it

is who those swing voters were. And it does confirm some of what we believed from the pre-election polling and then from the exit polls. These voters were more likely to be young, more likely to be male, and more likely to be diverse than the overall electorate. And less college educated. And less college educated.

They're more likely to not have a college degree. So people think of young people as college students, but it's important to think that there's a lot of young people who didn't go to college, and this is a big cohort that Donald Trump made inroads with. And that is a scary prospect for Democrats because this used to be our base, right? And Donald Trump has made very real gains with them.

We there was a ton of debate about the polling and the unskewing of the cross tabs and all of that about what gains Donald Trump was making, but he made those gains and they were real and they are why he won the election. The second piece I think is interesting and just puts into perspective just how big the challenge was

for Kamala Harris and the Democrats in this election is that Harris and Trump had similar personal favorability ratings, but a majority of 2024 voters had a positive approval of Donald Trump's first term in office. And among swing voters, it was 5937. And so that is also once again alarming because it means that we lost a messaging war over the course of time. That we allowed Donald Trump's presidency

to become more popular over the course of the four years. That's not all a messaging fair on the Democrats' part. A lot of that is inflation and nostalgia for lower prices for sure. But I also think that in some ways you can look at that and find some glimmers of both can look at that and find some glimmers of both those pieces of data and find some glimmers of hope. What it tells me is that Donald Trump's winning coalition is much more fragile than

people assume. These are voters who don't have a history of voting for candidates like him, who disagree with him on a lot of issues, and have pretty high expectations for what he's gonna deliver. Because that's what that tells me if you don't really like Donald Trump that much, you don't really agree with him that much, but you voted for him because you thought his last presidency was good, means you expect lower prices, less chaos, more stability this time around.

If he doesn't deliver that, we have a very good shot at winning those voters back. Yeah, I thought there's a few other like really interesting pieces of data here. I mean, to your point, like retroactive approval of Trump's presidency is very interesting to me because, you know, there's this debate, like, were we too focused on Donald Trump or we're not focused enough on Donald Trump?

Do we attack him too much? We not attack him too much? This suggests that it really wasn't about attack. It wasn't as simple as attacking him or not. It was like how to attack Donald Trump. And I don't think this is necessarily just that it really wasn't about attack. It wasn't as simple as attacking him or not. It was like how to attack Donald Trump. And I don't think this is necessarily just like the Kamala Harris campaign's fault,

but Donald Trump gives you, we've said this a million times, he gives you so many targets. And I think like it's just hard to go after his character or go after things about Donald Trump that people already know about him. And it was much more difficult also to go after new information about Donald Trump, which is what he proposed to do in the future.

But it was harder in the end to get people to believe that the Donald Trump they had already seen through four years in office would carry out all these extreme 25 agenda things. I don't know how you would have fixed that. Maybe that's just a problem that's unique to Donald Trump because he's a candidate who ran who had been president before, which is very unusual. I thought that was notable. If you look at the top reasons to support Trump from new Trump voters,

so these were people who voted for Trump this time who either didn't vote before or voted for Biden before. Number one, we'll secure border and fight illegal immigration, 48%. Number two, fix our economy and get things back to the way they were when he was president, 44%. Those are the two top reasons. The other reasons are all in the,

the other three of the top five are in the 20s, low 20s, strong leader, cut taxes, including tips, social security and overtime pay, and then won't let our children be endangered or confused by transgender ideology, it was 22%, right? But so the big, big ones, like double the support for those bottom three, immigration and fixing the economy back to where it was when he was president. And on that economic point, they had a bunch of reasons listed. And they said, is this more of a

reason to support Kamala Harris, or more a reason to support Donald Trump? On the economy, she won on fighting for the middle class, taxing the rich, access to affordable healthcare. Those were all given as like top reasons to vote for her over Donald Trump, but Trump won on state of the economy and level of inflation, which also goes to show the challenge because her ads, her message about what she was going to do in the economy, like it broke through to people, but it just wasn't enough to overcome people's nostalgia about Trump's management of the economy when he was president and their frustration over inflation when Biden and Harris were in office, which just like, I don't know what you do about that. I mean, like that, that seems to me like there's plenty of things for the

Democratic party to do and improve as we go forward. I think that, you know, part of this is not just figuring out how to win an election that's a coin toss against an authoritarian like Donald Trump, but to like actually build a majority, which means not just winning the presidency, but like winning the Senate too. So I think there's a whole bunch of other things

that Democrats need to do to compete better. But some of what was specific to this election is like, I don't know what she could have done. And I don't know what, what Biden could have done if he had been able to run a race like he did in 2020. Like I just, it's just, it was the set. There was significant dissatisfaction with the status quo and Donald Trump was able to be, be the change candidate, right?

And we had like, we can have 75 different podcasts talking about what it could have, should have to change that. Most of those decisions would probably would have had to been made prior to the 109 days that Kamala Harris was the nominee. But yeah, it was a brutal political environment for Democrats. And even then it ended up being quite close.

They also asked a question that was, are you more concerned that Kamala Harris would be a continuation of failed economic policies from Biden or more concerned that she'll be too liberal as president and among swing voters, continuation of the failed economic policy, like one by 10 points. So they were much more concerned that she'd be

a continuation of Biden than she was too liberal. And then they asked a similar set of two questions about Trump, are you more concerned that he has an extreme agenda, like Project 2025 and banning abortion, or are you more concerned that he would pass economic policies that favor the rich and the extreme agenda, one on that one among swing voters by four points. So it was much closer than the common one, but it does tell me that as we look forward

in the next four years, the potential extremism of the Republican agenda definitely does turn people off. And it's not just that they're gonna help rich people at the expense of everyone else. So it is like, I never wanna lose completely the, some of their stuff is just really extreme part of it because it does worry swing voters,

as much if not more as his policies to help rich people. I mean, that was the strategy that won for all the talk about dobs and democracy and all of that. What would the actual winning strategy in 2022 was to paint these Republicans as extreme. Abortion was the main reason they were seen as extreme and it opened the door to a lot of other arguments about their extreme views, but that was it.

And I just, one other thing that I just have to remind myself all the time when I'm thinking about this is we're never running against Donald Trump again. Yeah. And so like a lot of the energy we are using to talk about Donald Trump right now, we actually have to resist and it has to be about the Republican Party.

We have to brand the Republican Party in a way that the Republican Party has branded Democrats in the nine years that Trump's been on the stage. Yeah, agreed. What about the county by county turnout numbers and anything they're interesting to you? And can you remind people why figuring out turnout effects on the outcome of the election

is trickier than it might seem? I'll try to explain this in the shortest way possible because this is a debate. I mean, you've basically done four podcasts, four podcast series about this over the last decade about turnout versus persuasion, what's more important, and the answer is obviously both. But in looking at this data, just the way,

I think maybe the way to try to understand why this is hard is in most counties in this country, Donald Trump got more votes in 2024 than he got in 2020. And in those same counties, Kamala Harris got fewer votes than Joe Biden got in 2020. What we do not know is that in the votes that Trump gained, did he gain those votes because people who voted for Biden in 2020 voted for Trump in 2024,

or are they new voters who did not vote before? And same thing for Kamala Harris. Does she have fewer voters because some Biden voters voted for Trump or because a bunch of Biden voters stayed home? We will have be able to, you can make some guesses. The answer is obviously both happened. And you can really see that in some of the county,

particularly the counties like along the Rio Grande and other places that made massive swings. Where it just, it's obvious that there's a huge amount of switching there. That's particularly true when some Latino precincts. But we'll have a better idea of understanding the, how much was persuasion, how much was turnout when we get the catalyst data in a few months.

Just as an example of why this is so confusing, one of the arguments you're hearing from people who are on the left who are complaining that Kamala Harris had too moderate of a campaign, she ran as Republican light, she hung out with the Cheney's, all of that, is they point to places like Milwaukee and they say, there were fewer votes in the Democratic stronghold

of Milwaukee County in 2024 than 2020, which means she failed to excite the base. Except when you dig in there, the population of Milwaukee County has gone down over the last four years. So turnout was actually up as a percentage of the overall electorate. There are just fewer people who live in the county. And so it's all very confusing.

And the people who trying to weaponize this on either side or oversimplifying what is a very dynamic process. Carlos Odio, who we've all talked to a bunch on here, he did like an initial analysis of Latino vote based on county by county results. And one thing he mentioned, which is, it does seem obvious now that I think about it. He's like, if you look at the votes in a county,

he's like, if Trump added the same number or similar number of votes that Kamala Harris lost in a given county, that suggests that it was a swing and it was persuasion, right? But if Trump gained like double the number of votes that she lost, well, then it seems like he might've added some new voters. Or if she lost double the number of votes that he gained, then maybe she lost a bunch of voters who just stayed home, right? And you can also start figuring this out based on the split ticket stuff. So like where some Democratic Senate candidates ran ahead of Kamala Harris or behind, that means that some people either, you know, voted for Donald Trump and Ruben Gallego or voted for Donald Trump and left it blank or vice versa, wrote a rubin guy ego

and left the top of the ticket blank. Like people do all kinds of weird things. And you're right, we need to get like the voter file data. I do think one, a couple like larger trends that you can spot right now is in the battleground states, turnout wasn't really down that much at all. In some states like Georgia, it was higher, right? Like there was more votes.

And so it's hard to imagine it's much of a turnout issue in those battleground states. There's probably some people who stay home, but in the non-battleground states, especially in like big blue states around cities, turnout fell enough that you could see in those states that probably there was a bit of a turnout challenge. Yeah, and like how much did,

like that obviously had some real consequences for the battle to take the House, but in terms of the presidential, it doesn't really matter as much. And like just looking at, this is related to the county, coming from the county data, the folks at Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball did a map of where Senate candidates outperformed Trump and Harris.

And the ways in which democratic Senate candidates, particularly Ruben Gallego, Bob Casey, and Tammy Baldwin outperformed Kamala Harris, just basically across almost in every county in the state is just very interesting. Now by very small margins, to be clear, like less than a point, maybe a point in some cases, maybe more than a point in Gallego's case most likely,

but it was notable. Yeah. to be clear, like less than a point, maybe a point in some cases, more than a point in Gallego's case most likely, but it was notable. Yeah. Has anything in the data that you've seen so far changed your perception of what happened? Yeah, it does. And I think there are lots of little specific things, but I think the bigger thing here is,

we were so struck by how Trump won, right? The gains he made, the fact that he was gonna win the popular vote, something that most people did not think was gonna happen, that he won all seven battlegrounds, which even though we knew was the most likely scenario in Nate Silver's model, it still felt shocking that it happened. We still felt like, well, we'll get at least one or two

of them even in a lost scenario, right? But when you really dig in, what it tells me is that Trump's win, when you look at the county data, the Navigator polling, what Carlos did and much of other people, what it tells me is that Trump's win was wider but shallower than it seemed on election night. He won in more places. He won, he made significant gains with people who have not traditionally been part of the Republican coalition. He made huge gains in parts of the country like Miami-Dade, Osceola County, Florida,

even making some gains in places that we thought were going to be growth areas for us. That's very significant. The double digit gains in places like New York and California, huge. But ma'am, when you look at those margins in the battleground states, you look at his popular vote margin, which is now smaller than Hillary Clinton's margin when she lost in 2016, the smallest margin in every election since Al Gore's popular vote win over George W. Bush in 2000, it's on the razor's edge. And we have a, and I think you to have that conversation, you have to be able to hold two things in your mind at one time.

Trump did not win a landslide. He does not have a mandate for all these fucking lunatics he wants to put in office or do all these extreme policies. And the country is gonna recognize that and reject them if we can make the case. But that is not an excuse, as I've seen some people suggest online, that Democrats don't have real work to do, that we shouldn't revisit,

ask our really hard questions of ourselves, of our policy agenda, our communication strategy, how we campaign, how we govern, and really revisit that. Because if these trends continue, we are fucked. But we have room right now to bring them back as we did after Bush one and 04. And so I think it's fair to say that Trump did not win as big of a win

as he wants you to believe and the press wants you to believe, but that we still have to do the work that is consistent with a really tough loss. The data points that have not surprised me at all are the effect of inflation, cost of living, the hangover from the pandemic in terms of high prices and interest rates, our challenge as a party

with people who don't have a college degree going from just white voters to now Latino voters and some black voters and Asian voters as well. It did not surprise me because I have seen that over the last several years. I've heard it in focus groups myself. I think what has surprised me is the extent of the frustration, especially in cities and in blue states over immigration. It's not just about like what's happening down at the Mexican border.

And it's not just about like, we don't want immigrants here. It is about like, you know, Greg Abbott starting to, you know, bus migrants to cities and then other governors doing it. And then migrants just coming to cities because there were just so many. Like, I think that that led to a level of disorder in the minds of, again, mostly working

class voters, many of them Latino themselves, that I think sort of combines with the economic angst over inflation and just sort of amplifies it with people, right? And there is this like fundamental sense that things aren't fair, right? And I'm struggling and I'm paying more and I'm having trouble making ends meet. And then I'm seeing like I'm going out on the street and I'm in like, you know, there's people who are homeless

and then there's migrants here and there's the, and it's like, I don't figuring out how to address that and differentiating ourselves from Trump and Republicans who are like, you know, the, the JD Vances of the world who are, want to attack the migrants in Springfield who were here legally and trying to work hard and make a living for themselves and their families, making sure that we're different from that, but also like addressing and recognizing that this is a real challenge for people is I think a big part of what we need to do going forward. And even for like all the talk right now about cultural issues and transgender people playing sports and all this.

Like again, I think that the ad that everyone's talking about, about Kamala Harris, was more about undocumented immigrants in prison getting benefits. Tax-perfomited benefits, yeah. Right, than it is about trans people specifically. And I just, you know, it's a notion of people want opportunity, they also want fairness. And I do think we have to figure that out and actually, and take it head on and not just like dismiss it from people.

Well, I think there's a huge opportunity for us to fight back here and it's coming out pretty soon. Like in times of high inflation and high unemployment, you see backlash against the welfare state, right? And that includes this idea that undocumented folks are getting benefits when my family is struggling to buy eggs and milk or whatever else. This is the exact environment in which Ronald Reagan

weaponized welfare queens in the 80s. And the way, and like our opportunity to push back on that is one, we should have a better argument on immigration. We should have a more holistic argument on immigration. We should go back to the Obama era arguments about securing the border, but also solving the whole problem and dealing with people who've been in this country

paying taxes and playing by the rules for a long time. But also in this exact environment, Donald Trump and the problem is gonna get together to try to give trillions of dollars in tax cuts to corporations and the wealthy. And people in times of- And Elon Musk is gonna like try to give trillions of dollars in tax cuts to corporations and the wealthy. And people- And Elon Musk is gonna like try to cut your healthcare. This was the battle of the,

it is who is getting what I'm not getting, right? Republicans wanna make you think that it is people who depend on the welfare state and immigrants and Democrats are correctly, substantively, and morally are pointing out that the people who are getting over on you are the rich in the corporations. And now we have a rich president with a cabinet full of fucking billionaires

and being advised by the rules richest man on a plan to cut taxes for themselves and their fellow corporations. And that is a place where we can win this argument. So I'm gonna be talking about this nonstop on this podcast for the next year. Same. Okay, when we come back from the break,

we're gonna talk to Congresswoman Glucyn Camp Perez. One quick thing before we do that, this week on Assembly Required, Stacey breaks down the potential impact of RFK Jr. as health secretary, what it would mean for the FDA, the CDC, and the future of public health in America. Then she sits down with chef and activist, Tom Colicchio,

to talk about why food insecurity remains such a massive issue in the US and what steps we can take to fix it. Listen to Assembly Required with Stacey Abrams now, wherever you get your podcasts, including YouTube. When we come back, Marie Glusenkamp-Perez. Joining us today is one of the few Democrats who won a tough rematch in a Washington district that Trump also won. Congresswoman Marie Gloussincamp-Perez is here.

Welcome back to the show. Hey, John. Thanks for having me. First off, rough election for Democrats, tense election for the country. How are you doing? I mean, I'm so glad to be off of TV and commercials. You have no idea. It's great. That's good. That's good.

From your perspective as a Democratic member of Congress who represents a Trump district, do you think this race was winnable for Kamala Harris? I mean, clearly they thought it was, or they wouldn't, you know, ran. I am not in those rooms. Like, I'm not like a upholster. Was there a moment when you thought like, I'm not sure this was the right decision, or a moment you were like, I don't know if she's going to be able to do this, or the campaign did something where you thought it was wrong, anything like that. Well, I mean, my race was such a dogfight.

Like I was, I was very focused on this, but there's a certain point when like, you hear so many people confidently saying like, of course that you want, you know, my perspective is like very local. Like that's who I'm listening to, you know? And, and so I was aware that there's selection bias in my community. That's just not... What were people saying about the national race in your community? That's funny because they weren't.

People weren't talking about it. I was on an RV tour and nobody asked me about that. We were talking about Spirit Lake. We were talking about flooding in the Shales River Valley, a lot about sea lions, wildfire, talking about Waukegon County going down to a four-day school week because of timber revenue shortfalls, talking about fentanyl, very horrific deaths. So that's what people were talking about. Now that everyone's had a few weeks to process the results, there has been no shortage of takes, postmortems.

How do you feel so far about the reaction from your fellow Democratic colleagues about where the party needs to go from here? Do people seem more willing to listen or rethink their approach? I think it's difficult. It's always easier to find accountability somewhere else. It is hard like for everyone, anyone to say, like have like that lens, you know, but I also think there's work to do.

Like there are serious problems and it's not the time to just be moping around in a ditch somewhere. Like there's real work to do. Yeah. What so far has concerned you the most about an incoming second Trump administration and the nominations he's announced so far? Like there are a lot of groups who are like, oh, they're trying to have

contingency plans and like, what do you need to do? Like if X then Y. And, and I think that is, this is not a predictable administration. Like we don't know what's going to happen. Like to me the point is like go home and talk to your folks, like figure out what they need. And to the extent, like flexing the muscle of like what are the things that we agree on? Like, where are the constituent parts we can make progress? And what are the non-political, you know,

non-partisan things that need to be done? You know, there's a really good book, The Art of Logic in an Illogical World, and she talks about how you kind of take these big cultural issues and you break them down into constituent parts and you say like, it's not about the thing, you know, delete the proper nouns like for instance, like Hunter Biden's laptop, I got a ton of emails about that or letters and I think when you lift the hood up on that and you think about it, it's a

lot of those people are talking about their sense that there is a justice system that works differently if you have good lawyers and influence. And that's actually something that we agree on. Like we want real progress. We want a level playing field. So don't belittle people, don't ridicule them. Like figure out what it is in the argument that you agree on and just take the celebrities

out of the argument. I mean, it does seem difficult for Democrats to ignore culture wars when some Republicans seem pretty intent on starting them. One of your House colleagues, Nancy Mace, introduced a resolution to ban transgender women from using women's bathrooms at the Capitol that she said is specifically intended

to target one of your new colleagues, Sarah McBride. You know, Mace got the media reaction she wanted, Mike Johnson just announced that he's going to implement the policy. How do you think Democrats should handle shit like that? Well, one of the points is like don't accept the framing, you know, like they're trying to fundraise off of being mean to each other. Don't buy into it. Like it's not like you're creating this feedback cycle when you're like talking about this mean to each other. Don't buy into it. You're creating this feedback cycle when you're talking about this thing that's just mean.

And thinking about how do we treat each other like humans. How are you a good neighbor? How are you just the same way that you would take care of your neighbor at home? When somebody's hurting, leave them groceries. Be humans to each other first and not getting into a camp on it. And that is a way to overcome some of this incentive structure for attention seeking behavior. Yeah, I was struck by Congresswoman-elect McBride's like initial tweet about this after

Nancy Mace did it where she was like, you know what, a lot of people come to Congress and they have different journeys and different life experiences and I just hope we can all treat each other with respect and kindness. And that to me, I was like, that's probably, that's the right response. Yeah, like there's real, there is, there's serious work to be done and it's not like picking on each other. So I feel like a lot of people in politics and in DC talk about rural districts like yours as if they're anthropologists trying to understand

a foreign culture. What do you think are the most important things the national conversation misses about where you live and the people you represent? Well, like I think there's something very powerful and necessary. Like, I think when you have these big, extract ideas like, you know, environmentalism,

they're very amorphous. It means whatever that person thinks it means. You know, but when you talk about loyalty to the Chehalis River, when you talk about loyalty to like, loving, you know, Forlorn Lakes or loving the Gifford Pinchot, like that means something to people and it exists in the concrete and like that is necessary to bring to the to the bigger national conversation, like that specific loyalty is necessary

for people to do from all over the country, from all different perspectives, all different kinds of communities, if you want to arrive at something that is more universal or that is like a national policy. You can't start with the general and expect it to fit the specific, like you have to start from the specific. There's a school of thought from some progressive Democrats

that the key to winning back working class voters who might be more moderate than the national party on issues like immigration or crime or guns is with a more populist economic agenda. As someone who has broken with the party on some of these issues, what do you think about that? Well, I'm not a political scientist, so people mean all different things

when they name any of these things, but, you know, one thing that sort of grinds my gears is, like, you know, people are like, we're for the little guy. I'm like, nobody asked you to call me the little guy. Like, nobody self-identified. Like, that's not a helpful framing. It actually implies a hierarchy that I didn't ask to be a part of, you know?

And so it starts from respect, it starts from curiosity, hierarchy that I didn't ask to be a part of. And so it starts from respect, it starts from curiosity, and specificity. So I think it's really important to bring that lens of like, when I was running the shop, I remember having a fire inspector come and tell me that I couldn't have a water-based fire extinguisher, because they were worried I wouldn't know the difference between, you know, grease fire and electrical fire. And that means they want me to be exposed to PFAPs every time there's a fire.

You know, like listen to us. Right. Like assume that we know what we're talking about and then figure out why the policy isn't matching what I'm saying is going, you know, what I'm saying is going on as a business owner in the trades. Yeah, I thought about that, something you recently said,

I think you were talking to Jake Tapper about, I'll have Democrats say to me, why does someone in rural America, thousands of miles away from Mexico, how could they care so much about the border and immigration? And hearing you talk about fentanyl and how your constituents have experienced fentanyl crisis,

it's like, well, they're not, we have to stop thinking that people are just sitting there saying, oh, the migrants are invading my town and I'm going to be xenophobic and not something like fentanyl which seems like a real crisis in a lot of communities. Yeah. So when I was running the auto shop, you have to know to ask the right question to get the right answer because people, you cannot assume that you are communicating with someone.

You have to ask the same question multiple ways to get to like like who changed the oil last like Why did they do it? And it's it's a similar thing of like I have serious questions about how polling has been done around this question Because are you asking about you know access to drug treatment or are you talking about you know mental health because I think you're gonna draw different responses or presumptions and so like the necessity of specific cultural fluency with the community you're talking to really matters because I think we would get to a much clearer idea that people are tired of seeing their family members die.

They are tired of seeing people throw their lives away. I think we have a hard look in the mirror and people say like, I'm so empathetic, you know, but like, are you holding empathy for the person who's lost two pregnancies from fentanyl? Are you, or somebody who's losing their child, somebody who's, you know, having their truck repossessed, like, losing their business, like, assume goodwill, you know, assume that people are good and try to understand what it is they're saying and

what they're going through. Curiosity. It seems like good advice. Tell me about the proposal that you and Congressman Jared Golden just introduced to create a select committee on electoral reform. I thought that was interesting. Yeah, I mean, increasingly the American public feels like Congress is not Trustworthy they think a lot of us believe that like 90% of Americans believe on 90% of the issues So why are the 10 things like dividing and driving driving the car? You know instead of the things that we agree on and the things that we all agree are our priorities and our values.

So I think we need to have an electoral commission to say, like, what are the paths to having a more representative body? How do we deliver a body where there are more people from the trades, more parents of young kids, more people who are not homeowners, like people who are in rural communities, people who don't have internet at home. We should have the American experience reflected in the legislative body, whether that means something like open primaries or proportional representation, and having a bigger view of not what is electorally useful to a district or a member, but the bigger scale, like how do we have more of our values and priorities reflected in more of Congress?

You've talked about how we need more normal people, quote unquote normal people in politics, which I agree. What do you think the big impediments are for like just someone who is reflective of the face of America and the richness of the American experiences and all different geographies and trades and everything else.

What are some of the biggest impediments to that person running for office? Well, I mean, for one thing, it's like having the time and the support to do it is one thing. But it's also like, I first ran I talked I remember talking to this political consultant and he literally chortled when I told him that I had an eight-month-old. He was like hope you

never want to see your baby again. You know and it's it's like being dismissed and made small and you know saying saying that your experience is not relevant to legislating, that's patently false. I have passed the second most number of amendments of anybody in my party in my class. It's like having a different lens to view things through is necessary and it's productive to say, did you think about the experience of a rural American

when you're legislating about whatever, you know? And so bringing more of the experience, that's necessary and productive. So it's not just having, it can't just be about how much you can raise out of your phone and your family. So those are some really core things. It should not be like, you know Kind of like having activists in the largest big city nearby dictate who is a good fit may not be a representative body

Right, right last question. You've talked about the need to Deindustrialize politics that you know candidates and elected officials should should tailor their message and their focus on their own communities, their own voters. You've certainly done that. Seems right for members of Congress. And I know you're not focused on national politics. But one thing I think a lot about now is whether with a polarized electorate and a very fractured media environment, like it's still possible for a leader to speak to the whole country and the future in a way that resonates with Americans from all walks of life.

What do you think? Yes, hopefully, but I think it's also true that words have been so, like everything is so hot. Like you don't know what somebody is hearing when you're talking to them about being, you know, like environmentalism so hot. Like you don't know what somebody is hearing when you're talking to them about being, you know, like environmentalism or stewardship or logging. Like you don't know what that means to them.

You don't know the cultural connotation of that word. And so when you are talking in specifics, there's power there because there is something that we are all pointing to. And from that should be derived our national values, or the national thing that we're talking about. But talking about a specific experience, like in the granular level, like truth is not black and white.

It is three dimensional. Like left versus right is not something that exists in nature. Like I think if politics has a shape, it's probably more like a nautilus, or it is something different. And so when you are introducing more nuance, there is power to break the polarization. But you've got to get to an issue before cable news does.

You have to talk about something before it's turned into cannon fodder. Yeah. And it's probably, it's easy to say, you know, we have so much more in common than what divides us, which is, you know, a political cliche that's been, you know, said over the years. I do think there's something to even talking about your own political experiences

or your own life experiences in real specific ways and saying, this may not be your life experience, but I'm sure we have similar values and that we want similar things, even if I experienced life in rural Washington and you experienced life somewhere else. Like I get, there's a language, there's a political language that has been so sanded down

and repeated over the years that it sounds phony, even if it wasn't intended to be phony. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I guess one example I'm thinking of is like, wildfire was the second largest emitter of CO2 in my state last year. And meanwhile, one of my counties has just gone down to a four-day school week because of falling timber revenue.

You know, and so square that, right? And say like, when we stop using lumber timber revenue. When we stop using lumber and forest products, they are replaced with oil. Having that bigger picture that comes from honest dialogue, honest relationship, and lived experience in rural communities. And that is the full spectrum. Like you need all of that to show up

to have a productive dialogue. Congresswoman, thank you as always for joining Pod Save America and for always giving us so much to think about. Appreciate it. Thank you, it's fun. That's our show for today. Big thanks as always to the Congresswoman for stopping by and we will be back with a

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