Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov - What Zohran’s Victory Signals About the Left (ft. Rep. Greg Casar)

Episode Date: June 27, 2025

Jessica sits down with Texas Congressman Greg Casar, chair of the House Progressive Caucus, to talk about how the Democrats can win back the trust of working class voters. They discuss Rep. Casar’s ...past as a labor organizer on construction sites in Austin, what it’s like to go on tour with Bernie Sanders, and what the national party can learn from Zohran Mamdani’s campaign for NYC mayor. Follow Jessica Tarlov, @JessicaTarlov.  Follow Prof G, @profgalloway. Follow Raging Moderates, @RagingModeratesPod. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Enzo. No, not right now. Lots of us feel like we understand our dogs. But scientists who actually study dogs say we might be a bit overconfident. We're just not as smart as we think we are when it comes to understanding our dogs. This we can't explain it to me. Do we actually know what our dogs are feeling? Or are we just fooling ourselves?
Starting point is 00:00:29 New episodes every Sunday. Hey, this is Peter Kafka. I'm the host of Channels, a show about what happens when media and tech collide. And this week, I'm talking to Emily Sunberg, whose Feed Me newsletter is a thriving one-person business with mega fans and lots of subscribers. This is a story about a media company that's taking off.
Starting point is 00:00:54 A very wise person once told me, once you turn certain levers on, you can't turn them back off. And I don't need to right now. Like everything's working. I don't need to give more of my personal life. That's This Week on Channels, wherever you listen to your favorite podcast. Welcome to Raging Moderates. I'm Jessica Tarlov. Today I'm speaking with Representative Greg Kassar. He's in his second term representing Texas's 35th district, and he's also the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. He's currently campaigning across the country alongside Bernie Sanders in the Fighting Oligarchy Tour, and he's been outspoken about his belief that the Democratic Party
Starting point is 00:01:28 should work to be known as the party of the everyday person. Representative Kassar, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for having me on. I'm really excited. I've been waiting a bit to have you. So pent up excitement and it feels fitting that we have such a big news story to talk about this morning that relates directly to the kind of work and campaigning that you're doing with the New York City Democratic Primary last night.
Starting point is 00:01:52 We're recording this Wednesday morning. So are on Mondani. I wouldn't say shocking everybody, because the mood was that it was shifting in his direction against Andrew Cuomo. It would have been a shock two or three months ago. Definitely a shock two or three months ago. Definitely a shock two or three months ago. And there's only one pollster that got it right, actually,
Starting point is 00:02:09 that had Momdani pulling this off. But can you talk about your initial reactions to the result and what you think it means about the party on a larger basis? Well, look, I'm happy to be on this podcast. I'm very clearly a progressive. I'm progressive caucus chair. And of course, you know, Mr. Mamdani's win is a big progressive win. But I think it also can't be underestimated how much his win can be attributed to connecting with people,
Starting point is 00:02:39 with being authentic, with going all over New York City. A lot of people outside of Texas watched the Beto O'Rourke 2018 race from afar when Beto ran for Senate against Ted Cruz. We also gave a lot of money. Yeah, y'all also gave a lot of money. Which we did not get back. Yeah, well, yeah, hey, you know,
Starting point is 00:02:59 a lot of times money pours out of Texas. This was one opportunity where it came in. But a lot of us in Texas watching Zoran's race felt like we were watching a Beto O'Rourke moment from afar and that him walking all the way across Manhattan felt like watching Beto drive over 200 Texas counties because I think people are searching for that kind of a connection. And then the last thing that I'll mention about Zoran is, while his views are certainly part of the left part of the Democratic Party, he emphasized those economic issues, affording New York more than anything else. That's what the banner said behind him when he won, was being able to afford New York City. And I think that at the end of the day,
Starting point is 00:03:43 a lot of Democratic primary voters are looking for something new. They're looking for something authentic and they want to hear how the Democratic Party is going to address their economic needs. And I think that's a path forward for progressives. He was relentlessly on message and it was about affordability. Everything from your groceries to your childcare, which is a massive issue. He said that Bill de Blasio was his favorite New York mayor and Bill de Blasio got us universal
Starting point is 00:04:12 pre-K, which I was not a fan of de Blasio's mayoralty, but I certainly can appreciate what a big difference that made in the lives of parents and I have two young kids. So I totally get it. It connects really nicely with what you've been talking about, which is from your experience as a labor organizer that there are certain unifying themes where it doesn't really matter what your politics are, what class you are, maybe you're not the mega rich,
Starting point is 00:04:37 but if you're a working person that you're concerned about this affordability issue. And it seems like the establishment, or what, I'm gonna use quotes here, because I'm probably more part of the establishment than anything, has lost the plot. We need establishment critics of the establishment. Totally, we have a big 10 party.
Starting point is 00:04:56 That's always what I wanna emphasize. But affordability has felt like something we say versus something that we do something about. Well, the big gap between our constituents and those of us in elected office or pollsters or consultants, I think can best be visualized for me by talking to constituent after constituent after constituent, and they talk all day about housing and housing costs. And this is true across elected officials. They just, me in San Antonio and Austin, Texas,
Starting point is 00:05:28 all our constituents, whether you're in a Democratic district or Republican district, talk to us about housing costs. And then we come here to Washington, D.C. and you never hear the word housing. There's just such a divide between what everyday people want and what it is that we're debating on Capitol Hill or between the two political parties. And our goal has to be to close that gap and, and then to make sure that people
Starting point is 00:05:51 believe us, right? I think that we also have such a gap in trust so that even if we are telling folks that we're going to address their housing costs or their cost of living, most people feel like both political parties are corrupt and that politicians make a bunch of promises and then don't deliver for them, end up delivering for their friends on the inside instead. So we have a trust gap that we've got to close. We've got to earn back people's trust. And then we've got to talk about the issues that actually really make a difference for them. And I think that's something that Zoran certainly did because I don't think this is the progressive campaign
Starting point is 00:06:25 You would have seen during Trump 1.0 during Trump 1.0. I Sounded less like a labor organizer and was more Activist which is fine, but I think you know if we want to really defeat the cynicism That's at the heart of Trumpism I think we have to deal with the bigger issues that address all people, not just the most marginalized people. I totally agree and you know we'll see what happens in November because Andrew Cuomo may run on the fight and deliver line, Eric Adams is going to be on the
Starting point is 00:06:57 independent line in New York here, but to kind of reverse how we've been thinking about this for a long time, What do you think the progressive representatives, progressive caucus can do to ensure that people who are more moderate still feel like they're part of the tent? Because I feel like it's almost flipped that we used to think about how do we bring progressives in? And now if you are gonna pull off a mom Donnie win,
Starting point is 00:07:22 for instance, how do you make sure that people who are more centrist, I don't want to get into a big anti-Semitism conversation, but people, for instance, who don't think that, it's a good thing that he supports the BDS movement. Like, how do you fold everyone together? Yeah, I was just with Senator Sanders in Republican controlled parts of Texas,
Starting point is 00:07:43 thousands of people in Amarillo, Texas, that goes like 70% for Republicans. And you have plenty of more moderate Democrats there, and frankly, plenty of conservative Democrats in the Texas panhandle. And what I said in front of these crowds of thousands and thousands of people is that your friends and family that voted for Donald Trump were lied to. Trump said he was going to be a president of peace and not get us into more endless wars in the Middle East, while Trump seems now intent on starting more endless conflicts.
Starting point is 00:08:15 Trump said that he was going to lower the cost of living and his big bill is not only going to kick millions of people off of their health care, it's going to jack up health care costs for the average family of four by $2,000. So he's betraying people. He went and lied to people. And I said, if you voted for Donald Trump and you're at this rally, you're welcome here. And we have to tell folks that everybody's welcome to be a part of this party and that there's so much that unites us, even if we have disagreements on a variety of issues.
Starting point is 00:08:43 I'm kind of going back to my roots as a labor organizer in this moment where my job was to organize 200 guys on a construction site. And 200 guys have at least 200 different opinions on a construction site, but we were able to unite everybody around the common idea that everybody that works seven 12s in the sun deserves a raise and that the guy making millions of dollars at the very top of the real estate scheme can definitely afford it. And that's how we brought people together immigrant workers, native born workers, undocumented workers, black, brown, white workers. We say in Texas, our construction sites include people that cross the
Starting point is 00:09:22 border and people where the border crosses them. Their families have been here forever. And we were able to get people together around the common theme of economic issues. And in fact, we're able to move some people on issues like immigration, not by saying, hey, you have to be charitable and support the rights of somebody else, but instead say, hey, if everybody on this construction site has equal rights, if everybody can organize into a union and demand a raise without being scared that ICE is going to get called on them, we're all going to be better off.
Starting point is 00:09:54 And I think that's part of what the progressive movement has to learn from the labor movement to bring people in, is to say, look, you shouldn't be on board with all of our ideas just because we're right or high and mighty, but actually universal rights are universally good and everybody's welcome in a movement to try to win those baseline social rights. But first and foremost, the economic good of everybody has to be our number one issue. How does the conversation around identity politics fit into that kind of
Starting point is 00:10:26 framework? Well, for me, we have to put everybody, black, white, or brown, getting a raise first and foremost. Right? When I talk about social security expansion, that is a unifying issue where we say, look, Mark Zuckerberg should have to pay the same tax rate into Social Security as a school teacher does. And if he does, we can save Social Security for generations to come, expand it, pull every senior out of poverty. And certainly that resonates in black and brown neighborhoods and in white neighborhoods. But we have a lot of black and brown seniors that are barely getting by on their social security checks
Starting point is 00:11:07 because they were working for $2 an hour at Walmart when that was what the minimum wage was. And their social security check is based on that. And so it's good for everybody and we make it so. And if somebody says, hey, we should emphasize it more for one group or the other, I just feel like we're at a time where that kind of universal economic policy resonates in my majority Latino district just as much as it does in some of the majority white districts
Starting point is 00:11:34 that are swing districts in this country. Yeah, it does feel like Bernie Sanders was ahead of his time in the 2016 primary because he was taking a more intersectional approach to talking about these issues and he said the economic populism would lift all boats and obviously didn't end up winning the primary but it now has become kind of our common way of thinking about these issues that we want to steer away from identity politics. We want people to know that we care about them but we don't want to go out and say like this is my black pitch, this is my brown pitch, this is my lady pitch, this is my dude pitch.
Starting point is 00:12:08 And I think some of this actually also comes from a misreading or a mis-teaching of the civil rights movement. Oh, that's interesting. We can't forget that the march on Washington was for freedom and jobs. And we don't talk enough about A. Philip Randolph, who was the Black Union leader that kind of mentored and brought MLK forward on this. He always said, the best way to stop discrimination is certainly we should ban it, but we also need to guarantee full employment for people. Because if you make it so that there's lots of jobs that are required to pay well, then Americans of color are also going to be much better off in that situation.
Starting point is 00:12:48 And so I think that we can't forget that a lot of those early civil rights leaders also weren't just identity focused, they were really driving for economic change. And MLK was killed when he was going and standing up for sanitation workers on a union drive. And I just think that that part of our history has partly been forgotten, but also in my view,
Starting point is 00:13:10 there are people with a lot of money and a lot of lobbying power that want to de-emphasize the economic goals of the civil rights movement. I like that and haven't heard it before. I haven't said it before. Oh my God. This is the first time. Broke some news. Well, I don't know. I was just thinking, you know, um, A. Philip Randolph is just someone who
Starting point is 00:13:30 we've tried to celebrate on our Juneteenth parades and kind of re-elevate his legacy. And I was thinking about it this Juneteenth and just nobody had asked me that question since then. Well, it's a smart answer. If you get it again, I would integrate it into your, uh, That's a smart answer. If you get it again, I would integrate it into your stump speech of sorts. This is not the deepest question, but what's it like being out there with Bernie Sanders? Well, the first thing people need to know
Starting point is 00:13:55 is that Bernie Sanders has done, I think, 21 or 22 stops on this Fighting Oligarchy Tour. You know, I go and do three stops, and I have to take like half a day off. Yeah. The guy then goes and does a few more stops. It's just incredible that he has been doing this for this long, this well, tirelessly. I imagine that on this podcast, you might ask me about the gerontocracy.
Starting point is 00:14:19 I have a gigantic exemption for people with Bernie Sanders level energy. Oh, that's how it works. That's how it works. I mean, it is incredible to see what he does. It's also amazing on this tour to hear from so many people who said, look, I wasn't with Bernie in 2016, but now I'm here because maybe he was right this entire time. We were hearing him talk about how the billionaires were running the government behind the curtain, but now they've stepped out in front of the curtain and are publicly
Starting point is 00:14:51 bragging on social media about running the government. You know, they are running the cabinet meetings. And I think that it's a moment where a lot of folks are seeing the value in those big, bold ideas, because it's not just about left right. I think this is a moment about putting up a fight, actually standing on principle and pushing for economic policies that are universal, that everybody can understand, that can get us back into the mode of our society and our democracy can do big things together rather than the sort of technocratic version of the Democratic Party.
Starting point is 00:15:29 We're going to take a really quick break. Stay with us. 2025 marks 50 years since a trailblazer named Jam Todd decided to go to the gym with her little boyfriend. I had started going with go to the gym with her little boyfriend. I had started going with Terry to the gym just because, you know, he's your cute boyfriend and you love him and you like you want to spend all your time together, not thinking about being an athlete at all. Jan told WHYY in Philadelphia there were no other women at that gym. It wasn't considered appropriate for ladies to lift weights. Some gyms even banned it. The idea of a woman having muscles
Starting point is 00:16:06 was seen as somehow being somewhat transgressive. There must be something wrong with you if you want to have muscles. Anyway, feeling spicy that day, Jan squatted down and deadlifted 225 pounds, which is a lot of pounds. She went on to lift more weights, set a bunch of records, model in magazines, and inspire other women to lift weights. More recently, millions of women have started, but why now?
Starting point is 00:16:30 Answers on Today Explained every weekday in your feed. What's up y'all, it's Kenny Beaton. The 2024-2025 NBA season is over, but all that means for us is that the 2025-2026 season is already beginning. On Small Ball, we'll be talking about breaking news, major trades, and all the exciting developments the offseason has in store. Which teams are tearing it down? Who is retooling to make a championship push?
Starting point is 00:16:56 And what teams are leaving me dumbfounded by their lack of direction? Don't miss Small Ball with Kenny Beach, a new episode drops every Friday, available on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back. It seems like this need for moments of moral clarity has even permeated some on the right. Josh Hawley, who I am no fan of, is the one saying there are $800 billion of Medicaid cuts in this bill. He has a proposal to raise the minimum wage with Peter Welch.
Starting point is 00:17:28 You know, things that I certainly never expected to see, you know, from fist-pumped Josh Hawley running away during January 6th. So things are definitely changing, though. Imagine they're just going to pass the bill anyway. I don't have tremendous faith. But there's a recognition that this is where the American public is, no matter what your politics are, and that you kind of have to get with it. But what Josh Hawley is doing worries me.
Starting point is 00:17:50 And it worries me because if… If Republicans get it, then we're really screwed. Well, yeah, look, if Trump was trying to capture the anti-establishment vote from the Democrats and in some ways has, right, taken the working class vote, he could lose that, but he's trying to hold on to that. You know, he ran as this anti-war candidate as well, taking key parts of the Democratic base. And if Democrats don't get with it, you know, after Trump is done, there's gonna be another presidential race. And I think that the JD Vances and Josh Hollies of the world, if they recognize that raising the minimum wage from $7.25 to $17 an hour is incredibly popular, you know, that they don't
Starting point is 00:18:32 need to go be 1988 Bush Republicans cutting Medicaid to give their billionaire donors friends, that's a real risk because that kind of right-wing politics could have real strength here. So Democrats have a short window of opportunity to reclaim our mantle as the party of the working class and not let the Josh Hollies of the world take it away from us. Look, I feel like with all this backlash being on Bernie Sanders tour, there's a very good chance that Democrats win the midterms. But if we get complacent after that, if we pat ourselves on the back and go, see, we don't have to do anything different, we'll win.
Starting point is 00:19:06 Then I do think we run the real risk of a Josh Hawley or JD Vance or whoever else eating our lunch for the next eight years after that. And we just can't have that. I'm concerned about a band-aid midterm win as well, because that's really what 2022 turned out to be. And I was psyched about the midterms then. I felt like maybe we had a chance and Perhaps it was preordained that Trump was to come back. I still kind of think it was a winnable race
Starting point is 00:19:31 But that's neither here nor there because we lost How do you think I mean you say we need to become the party of the working class again? And we're also on a clock to be able to do that. So What are the ways that you are messaging, showing up, etc., communicating that you think are really effective in dispelling all of this messaging that's coming from the right about this, but also how disappointed the Democratic base is in our leadership? We're at a point where the Democratic Party is polling the worst it's been polling as a party since 1990, at the same time that Donald Trump's popularity
Starting point is 00:20:11 is collapsing. And so to me, what that shows is there's a huge opportunity for us to beat Trump and the Republicans. We just have to get our house strongly in order. And that's easier said than done, right? We don't have a speaker of the house or a democratic majority leader or a presidential nominee. So we have to do it as a collective.
Starting point is 00:20:33 We have to do it out in the streets and at these rallies and amongst democratic leaders. And we have to do it with members of the house that are gonna be the front lines here where the only one's running. And so I'm working with our progressive caucus to make sure that the top issues that we are running on have an actual real contrast with the Republican Party on economics. We don't want to just seem Republican light or mushy, have a real stark contrast.
Starting point is 00:21:02 Tax billionaires, not just block their billionaire tax cut, but increase taxes on billionaires and cut the cost of your child care, cut the cost of your health care, raise your wages, expand social security. So have that real contrast, have hopefully hundreds of Democrats campaigning on those economic issues and make it so that we are no longer defined by the Republican propaganda. The last thing I'll say on this is that I've started saying we need to have the construction site test to our policy agenda, which is can we expect a guy working in the summer heat on the construction site to care about the policy issue that we're out there talking about? And if the answer is no,
Starting point is 00:21:44 it's not really relevant to them, then we should probably cut it off of the top of our agenda. We were just talking about childcare in New York. If we are out there saying, we're gonna have childcare affordability because we're gonna deliver money to your governors who can use it in block grants to your municipality and you can get a voucher if you have ex-dependence
Starting point is 00:22:05 at an income of... At that point, people are like, screw this, this is more of the same political BS. We have to be out there, be clear. We have the ability as a country to say every single person, every single mom and dad, we're going to make sure your childcare doesn't cost more than 7% of what it is you make. I think that cuts through. That passes the construction site test. Definitely.
Starting point is 00:22:27 I mean, I love to hear those kinds of things. But as you're talking about what we can campaign on, I'm thinking about the frontline Dems that won their races by one or two percentage points. A lot of the progressive caucus members come from D plus 30 districts, right? Yes. They can say whatever they want and get reelected.
Starting point is 00:22:46 So what do you say to the Pat Ryans of the world, to the Tom Swazis of the world, about how your messaging can work in their kind of districts? This is a change that we're making on the progressive side. We recognize that we cannot protect the most vulnerable people or move progressive issues forward if we don't win. And so we are prioritizing the parts of the progressive agenda, which is anti-corruption,
Starting point is 00:23:09 get big money out of politics and stock trading by politicians, etc. Anti-corruption and broad-based economic help for working people and recognizing working people's work. That actually polls much better than the Democratic Party. It polls much better than the sort of more traditional moderate or Bill Clinton versions of that economic policy. And so if Democrats lean in where progressives are more popular, there's a lot that we can
Starting point is 00:23:38 do there. People can campaign on that in progressive districts and frontline districts. It can excite traditional Democrats, bring in disaffected voters, and bring over conservatives and independents. And you know, Congressman Ryan is the perfect example of this, right? He is a vice chair of the New Democrats, the moderate caucus here on the Hill, but he campaigned against corruption. He campaigned on raising wages and union rights. And so, you know, the baseline economics is the glue that brings together our big tent. And you saw that with some success yesterday in the New York
Starting point is 00:24:12 mayor's race where you had Brad Lander and Zoran sort of cross endorsing. I think, of course, that's not going to win in areas outside of New York City. Every different part of our country is going to be different in that way. But we're going to need more of that coalition work where we say, what is it that we agree on? Let's not start with the hottest button issue where we disagree. Let's go talk to our relatives and coworkers and friends who voted for Trump and say, are you a billionaire? Well, if you're not a billionaire, then you're getting screwed over right now on the biggest thing happening on the hill. You're getting your money taken away to be handed to somebody that already has billions of dollars who just wants millions more for God knows what.
Starting point is 00:24:50 I like the conciliatory tone and that there's no purity tests involved in any of this. Like most important thing, get the numbers on the board because that's the only way that you can affect real change. So that's heartening to my little moderate soul. I want to talk about the reconciliation bill. It's with the Senate now, they're going to make a bunch of changes. And I guess Senator Thune has told Mike Johnson that he's basically just got to deal with
Starting point is 00:25:17 whatever they do on the Senate side. What do you think the prospects are for the bill passing? What do you think it's going to look like? It's very hard to get into the heads of these sort of scared Republican puppet politicians. They aren't representing their own constituents, right? Republican constituents hate the billionaire budget bill just as much as everybody else does.
Starting point is 00:25:41 I mean, when you go and talk to an actual real human, not somebody that is a lobbyist here on Capitol Hill, they don't think that we should be cutting health care to give the richest people on earth a tax cut. So Republican members of Congress aren't voting with their constituents and so then it becomes very hard to predict what they're gonna do because they're just voting based on Trump's tweets, based on fear and money and reelection and all of the wrong sorts of motives. So that creates these crazy dynamics here on Capitol Hill where people are saying, you
Starting point is 00:26:16 know, they could implode on themselves. Totally possible. Um, or they could just ram this thing through, but probably seal their electoral fate. Now Trump is talking about trying to go and redistrict states now at the last minute. He's talking about redistricting Texas, redistricting Ohio, because he knows, and his political team knows, that if they keep on marching down this road of passing this deeply unpopular bill, they're going to have to try to go change the rules of the game to win the midterm elections. And so I'm very bad at predicting what folks will do
Starting point is 00:26:50 when they're acting frankly so irrationally and that they're just sort of scared of the latest Trump tweet. Yeah, that's, we'd all be a lot richer if we were able to predict what was actually gonna happen when Trump is involved in all of this, if we were betting on politics. I want to make sure that we talk about immigration a
Starting point is 00:27:08 little bit. You are from a border state, there has been a lot of movement on the immigration issue. It was Donald Trump's best issue in his top polling right now. He's basically breaking even on it. In most polling, he's, you know, around minus six to minus 15 on it. The LA protests have not gone in his favor. Turns out people don't like the National Guard hanging around, but I don't feel like Democrats
Starting point is 00:27:35 have been able to put forward, like in your economic terms, like a proactive vision for what our kind of immigration policy would look like. So we need to, for legal and humane and thoughtful and safe and orderly immigration and reform that hasn't happened my entire lifetime to achieve that kind of system. But first I think the Democrats need to stop playing defense and sounding apologetic on immigration in this moment where Donald Trump is violating laws daily on this issue.
Starting point is 00:28:10 So the Progressive Caucus, in sort of the view of doing things differently, has partnered with organizations on polling on this issue. And right now, the overwhelming majority of voters do not agree with Trump's huge overreach on immigration, but what progressives need to learn is that we can't just talk about this as an immigrants rights issue because it's not just an immigrants rights issue. When Trump is deporting people against Supreme Court orders, that's not just an immigration issue, That's an issue of the rights of everybody. Because if the president can arrest or disappear or deport someone and not listen to judges or the Supreme Court, that endangers the rights of everyone. In my state of Texas, Trump deported a 10-year-old US citizen girl who was recovering from brain
Starting point is 00:28:59 cancer, separating her from her doctor. That's offensive to people regardless of whether you're in an immigration debate about what the ideal immigration system is to get to. So I think that we've got to, on the progressive side, learn to not just talk about this as an immigrant's rights issue. It's an issue for U.S. citizens and the rights of everyone. And I think on the more sort of traditionally establishment side, I think people have to be less scared of the immigration issue and be willing to go and fight on the offense against what Trump is doing. Because we saw when now oversight ranking member Robert Garcia
Starting point is 00:29:36 flew to El Salvador, and when Senator Van Hollen flew to El Salvador to highlight how Trump was violating US Supreme Court orders, Trump's numbers tanked on the immigration issue for days and days and days after that. And so I think we can't be scared of going on offense. Yeah, it's also a big economic issue that you can weave in pretty seamlessly. The country does not work without frankly undocumented immigrant labor.
Starting point is 00:30:02 How do you like going on Fox? I really liked it. I had a lot of fun. You know, I'm trying to get back on. So if you can talk to somebody over there, I'll be back. I probably know some people, you know, they kept on trying to talk about Tesla fire bombings and having like a burning Tesla next to my head. But I've, you know, let people know that Elon Musk was sending your money on fire or stealing it for himself.
Starting point is 00:30:26 And I just think that the whole idea always made me uncomfortable of we're going to, you know, cancel members of Congress or progressives that go on Fox or go on a conservative podcast. Ridiculous. Frankly, you know, shows like Joe Rogan's where, you know, Rogan endorsed Trump, but previously he had endorsed Bernie Sanders so I think it's we've got to go talk to everybody I think we're in a moment where it is these billionaires versus everybody else and our job is to go talk to everybody else. I love it so what's one thing that makes you rage and what's one thing that you think we should all calm down about?
Starting point is 00:31:00 So this is maybe light raging, but I've spent a good amount of time on this podcast talking about things progressives need to do differently and better. I think that for a lot of my moderate friends, one thing that I hope more moderates rage about is people trying to hijack the abundance stuff. There is a lot of good in thinking
Starting point is 00:31:23 about having more abundant supply of housing. And as for Klein's book, he talks a lot about Austin. I was the zoning chair in Austin and we did a lot of the increased housing supply work and that's why we're building more affordable housing in Austin than anywhere else in America. But seeing this, I think they called it Welcome Fest, I called it Walmart Fest because it was paid for by the Waltons. This big Welcome Fest, Walmart Fest, because it was paid for by the Waltons, this big welcome fest, Walmart Fest, moderate conference, we had speakers on stage saying that abundance is crushing unions and getting rid of the labor rules
Starting point is 00:31:55 or the things that protect our clean air and clean water that don't get us what it is we need. Look, I think that that is a hijacking of what people are talking about here and trying to sort of drag the Democratic Party back into sort of the 1988, 1992 version of the Democratic Party. We can't let I'm here as progressive caucus chair telling you there's definitely things progressives need to do better to increase our chances of winning swing voters. swing voters, but we also can't let corporate influence and the cycle of money and donations water down our message or have us do things that I think from the policy perspective are wrong, but politically are also really stupid
Starting point is 00:32:35 and hurt us too. I just don't think we should be out there campaigning in swing states with Mark Cuban as our spokesperson or be pitching ideas that were handed to us by a Walmart lobbyist. I think that hurts us too. So a little bit of rage there. Okay.
Starting point is 00:32:49 Calm down about anything or just high energy always? No. Okay. One thing that we can all chill out about as you were talking about, you know, purity politics or whatever, as I was just thinking about as we were talking about Elon, you know, AOC is saying the girls are fighting when Musk and Trump were in their little online war. Like, I feel like folks just need to chill out. There were some people criticizing her for saying that. I'm like, that's hilarious. That's how normal people talk.
Starting point is 00:33:18 Yeah, that was a good one. Totally. I feel that often about criticisms of her. I'm like, no, this is the stuff I actually think we should criticize her about. This stuff is fine. And same where people yesterday were appalled that Trump said they don't know what the fuck they're doing about Iran and Israel. And I was like, that's why people like him, by the way, because he talks like that. Yeah. And that might be one of the few true things that he's saying. And the thing that I'm offended or worried about is, yeah, like are men and women in uniform getting killed by it?
Starting point is 00:33:48 So, yeah. Priorities. Congressman Kassar, thank you so much for joining me. Thanks, y'all.

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