The Bulwark Podcast - Ben Wittes and Ro Khanna: Stormy Rafah

Episode Date: May 9, 2024

In New York, we are getting the trial we deserve: It's not about high principles and democracy, but the trashy celebrity culture America let into the White House. Meanwhile, Biden grows more impatient over Israel's plans for Rafah. Plus, the dark overlords of Silicon Valley, and a "new economic patriotism.” Rep. Ro Khanna and Ben Wittes join Tim Miller. show notes: Lawfare Daily podcast episode on Israel/Gaza Full clip from Khanna's conversation with Jewish and Arab students

landlord telling you to just put on another sweater when your apartment is below 21 degrees? Are they suggesting you can just put a bucket under a leak in your ceiling? That's not good enough. Your Toronto apartment should be safe and well-maintained. If it isn't and your landlord isn't responding to maintenance requests, RentSafeTO can help. Learn more at toronto.ca slash rentsafeTO. Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. It is Thursday. I'm here with Ben Wittes, who's been in court all week. And right now he's at the Lawfare Hype House, the Lawfare TikTok Hype House in New York City, where everybody's hanging out.

He also writes Dogshirt Daily. He's the editor-in-chief of Lawfare. He does so much. Just one other thing that he does. There's a Lawfare podcast as well, Lawfare Daily. Ben Wittes did kind of a monologue episode on Israel, Gaza, and the implications for the U.S. foreign and domestic policy. That's what it was called. We're not going to talk about that today, but it was awesome. And so if you want to know what does Tim think about this, basically everything that Ben would

have said in this podcast is what I think. And so we can just shortchange talking about it right now. And I give you my proxy on this matter. People can go check that out. That's very kind of you. It was a speech I gave at Brown University a couple weeks ago and was something I put a lot of thought into, and people have found it interesting and useful, and I appreciate that very much. Yeah, very nuanced, very thoughtful.

You can tell you put time into it. Something you notice about these once you become a podcast man, you can notice when people are winging it. Yes. You know, you like to think that we're just so talented at this that, you know, we can fake it. And maybe I fake a few listeners, but people can notice when you really put time and prepped into it. So it showed in that podcast. People should go check it out. Okay. Before we get into everything, before we get into the the case the the merits the testimony there's one thing i've just been dying to ask somebody that was in the room you know who can who is going to give it to me straight when stormy was on stage

that's a freudian slip when stormy was on the stand talking about donald Trump's just horrific lovemaking and borderline rape and how his wife doesn't love him. What was it like to just be able to look at Donald Trump's face during that time? So I was in the overflow room, which is actually good because I could look at his face. Whereas, you know, if you're in the courtroom, you're actually looking at the back of his head. The weird kind of hair merging from the three hair surgeries that kind of comes together. Exactly. And it has this kind of like one thing that I'd never really thought about in this trial is that people don't have facial expressions on the back of their head, which, you know, is obvious once you think about it. But you don't usually.

It's not true for me, actually. I have such a bad poker face that you can even read me from the back of my head. But for most people, that's true. Right. So Donald Trump, actually, the back of his head is a fairly good poker face. I think it looks just like Donald Trump all the time. So I was very interested in his reactions to Stormy Daniels' testimony, which mostly he sat with his eyes kind of gently closed like this. I don't think he was asleep, by the way, or napping, but I think he was kind of

trying to show that it was not getting to him or affecting him. He consulted with counsel, mostly Todd Blanche, who is kind of the Trump whisperer among the group. They all have their very specific jobs. And Blanche's job, I think, is the client management side, which is freaking hard. But mostly, I think he must have either consciously or subconsciously made a decision that he was not going to have kind of demonstrative reactions that would, you know, generate like Stormy Daniels said X and Trump flinched or Storm, you know, kind of news stories because people were really watching him closely. The transcript does reflect that he was at some points, and the judge actually called Blanche up and talked to him about this, that he was kind of muttering curses and sort of saying things in an

audible fashion. Those were in sidebar conversations with the lawyers that are reflected in the transcript, but I didn't see any of that. So I think he was, unfortunately, because I would love to say to you, and I'd love to see your face when I said this, I would love to say, you know, he was out of control. He really was getting to him. But I don't actually think I can say that in entire truth. The truth is that he was, I think he was pretty much the Donald Trump he would want to be under these circumstances. Luckily for me, I was going to be happy with whatever answer because a non-response when

someone is talking about how you have no love in your marriage and how you quasi-raped them leads to, you know, kind of a sociopathy that I think I attributed to Donald Trump as well. So, you know, whining Donald Trump I like that I think I attributed to Donald Trump as well. So, you know, whining Donald Trump, I like. Sociopathic Donald Trump, I also accept. Let's go to bigger picture then. And we kind of go through some of the big marks since we last talked. But you called this on the sub stack, the case we all deserve. We may have thought we'd have a trial about high politics, about executive power, a great constitutional principle, we'd have a trial about high politics, about executive power, a great constitutional principle, but we have a trial about something else.

So talk to us about how you're trying to frame this up. I was never one of the people who was dismissive of this case. And I always said, let's wait for the evidence. Let's wait for the legal arguments. Let's wait for the evidence. Let's wait for the legal arguments. Let's wait for the motions to dismiss. But I was one of the people who said this case is objectively less important than the January 6th case. It's objectively less important than the Florida case, which is busy self-imploding because of the judge. And it's objectively less important than the Georgia case. But what I did not think about in connection with those instincts was that, you know, those are the cases that are really democratically

important. But this is the case that's all about us. And why did we, not we as a group of people, but we as a society, elect Donald Trump? Because he is a celebrity and we are obsessed with these celebrity culture things. What is this case about? This case is about self-described alpha males paying off porn stars through these greaseball collections of information brokers. And when you deal with Donald Trump, that's the culture that you're dealing with. And we allowed that to infect the presidency, to overtake the presidency, for the presidency to become a creature of that culture in a fashion that, you know, we should have occasion to reflect on. And I do think this case is an occasion to reflect on that. How many steps from the presidency should David Pecker- At least seven. Right, like a lot. But he was none, right? He was in the White House, right?

What are the circumstances in which presidents should be signing reimbursement checks for their fixers to pay off their porn stars in the White House? The more I watch the case, the more I think, okay, is this the case I want? No. Is this the case I think reflects the highest, most important questions that the Donald Trump presidency raised? No. Is this the case we freaking deserve because we asked for a presidency that was like the dirty.com presidency? And so we got it. And now we have a case about the dirty.com and the National Enquirer and, you know, a bunch

of other publications that I've never heard of. Yeah, we deserve this. We're aligned on this. Again, obviously, I don't think it's as important as his attempted coup. I wasn't that thrilled about this case to begin with. But like, we deserve it. He deserves it. And sorry, in our grand battle to defeat Donald Trump, should he go down because

he lied about his reimbursement checks to his fixer about the rapey hotel room encounter with Stormy Daniels? Like, you know, no, I wish it was on something that had a little bit more substance, but it is what it is. He did that. And it seems to me like he's on track to conviction, which leads me to my next question. Is he on track to conviction? I mean, you can't get inside of the jurors' heads. But I mean, as you assess these testimonies, maybe a better way to ask that question is, over the past few days, has it seemed to you more likely that we're heading towards a conviction?

And if so, which testimonies were the ones that you think were the most powerful in that regard? Well, so the critical testimonies are neither Stormy Daniels nor Hope Hicks. Those are the ones that generated all the headlines, and rightly so. I actually found Stormy Daniels' testimony really moving and upsetting for a lot of reasons. you for saying that actually let's just pause on that because i had a disagreement yesterday i was i hate disagreeing with sarah on the next level podcast i disagree with sarah who i totally this isn't even a critique of her but like she felt a little icky about the stormy stuff and the stormy stuff is leaking out you know

and i think maybe i read more of the transcript and cause I also was felt moved by it. I think she was put in a horrific situation and has not maybe acted perfectly over the past five years who has eight years in the ways in which she talked about Donald Trump. But like, you know, I mean, she was pressured to essentially accuse him of rape,

like Gloria Allred in a situation that was rape adjacent. And she declined to do that because she felt like it was consensual. And like, I was just sort of moved by the transcript of her discussing that encounter and how gross it was and how challenging it was for her. But I, well, is that what you were referencing or is there something else?

Yeah. Principally. I also think this is a person who's had a very difficult life and has been manipulated by people who, some of them had, you know, fiduciary obligations to her, particularly Michael Avenatti, who got her in an enormous amount of trouble and are, by the way, now in prison for it, right? I mean, this is a person who's been quite exploited by a number of people, including but not limited to Donald Trump. And this is not a person who, at least by her testimony, went out seeking a relationship with Donald Trump.

She was seeking to be, you know, if you believe her story, to avoid a dinner with people that she didn't want to see and to maybe get on The Apprentice. She finds herself in a way that sometimes she has handled effectively and sometimes she's handled less than entirely honorably, frankly. She's definitely told different things to different people at different times and asked for money for the story to be true or not true. On the other hand, this is somebody who had the power of a lot of celebrity culture, including the celebrity culture-dominated presidency, arrayed against her and powerful people who wanted to destroy her, one of whom she was sitting across from

the other day. And I have to say, I looked at that just like, leave aside the case for a minute. I think she is more sinned against than sinning. And among the high profile group of people whose conduct is at issue in this case, I would much rather have a beer with her than anybody else. I'd much rather invite her to my house for dinner than David Pecker, or than her lawyer, Keith Davidson, or than her lawyer, Michael Avenatti. And she has to obviously take some responsibility for some of her choices in life, which have not been ideal, like associating with those people and doing business with those people. You know, when I'm watching her testify about what happened between her and Donald Trump,

I don't have any doubt about like, who the good guy in that story is. Right? No, no, we are team Stormy on this podcast, just like we were team Monica. Talked about that a while back. Anyway, I derailed us to that, but I think that's important. And I was interested to hear your first, you know, first person account of that.

But back to where you were going, which is which of the testimonies, we'll end with Hope Hicks, but which were the other testimonies that you thought were the most powerful, at least with regards to the verdict? Okay, so the most important testimony of the week is the one that people talk about the least, and it is the testimony of the controller of the Trump organization, a guy named Jeff McHoney. You know, the story in this case has two halves, right?

There's the story about paying off Stormy Daniels and paying off Karen McDougal, the catch and kill story. And then there's the story that's the actual crime, which is the falsification of business records by way of covering that up. Jeff McConney delivers almost the entirety of the second half of the story. He does it as a Trump loyalist. He worked for the Trump organization basically his whole career. He seems to have no animus against Donald Trump, seems to be fond of him. And he lays out from beginning to end how they set up a system to reimburse Michael Cohen for the transaction with Stormy Daniels and with a bunch of other stuff. And he does it in a fashion that the defense really did not lay a glove on in cross-examination,

didn't even really try. There is just no way you can come away with that testimony with the sense that the accounting of this matter on the part of the Trump organization was on the up and up, right? You can talk about, well, did Trump know that Allen Weisselberg had directed him to do this? Who knew what? I suppose you could argue about that. But that there was a reimbursement scheme with respect to Cohen vis-a-vis the payment to Stormy Daniels is simply not a matter of reasonable dispute. And I would be shocked if the jury had not internalized that as a result of both his testimony and the testimony that immediately followed him, the accounts payable woman at Trump Tower, whose name is Deborah Tarasoff, who had the great line asked to

explain the difference between accounts payable and accounts receivable. She said, accounts receivable, it's someone owes you money, you get it, it's coming in. Accounts payable, they send you a bill, you send the money out. That's the Trump Organization accounting practices. You mentioned something during that about the poor cross here. I asked you last week what the Trump defense was at this point. You gave an answer. I'm still not sure I understand it. So, you know, now we have another week's worth of cross examinations.

What kind of defense do you think that they're building at this point? All right. So first of all, I want to say that 12 hours after we had that conversation, the defense cross-examination of Keith Davidson happened. The lawyer who I described as, hey, he's not nearly as sleazy as I thought he was going to be, right? He seems like just a lawyer. Whoa, was I wrong? So this is why you never talk about somebody before the cross-examination is done.

I screwed up. Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. This guy is an unbelievable scumbag. You believe in the goodness of people? You know, somebody sits on the stand, takes the oath, and says things. And I'm like, okay, they seem like a good guy. We need to have some of us to deal a little bit more in the scummy side of society they're with you behind your shoulder being like wait a second i don't know about this actually this guy this guy reminds me

of anyway all right so we'll set that aside go ahead continue so the defense is still the same the defense is kind of has three prongs. One is that this was an extortion scheme by Stormy Daniels, not an election interference matter. But if it was an election interference matter, what's wrong with that? That's called democracy. NDAs are perfectly legal. There's no problem there if it was. And by the way, it was, you know, Melania would have been very hurt. Was any progress made in the cross of Stormy on that prong of the defense? No. So the cross of Stormy has only really just begun. I mean, there's been like an hour and a half of it. It will take up most of the day today. So that's the first prong of the defense.

I don't think they've made a lot of headway in that, but they definitely got David Pecker to admit some things. They got Keith Davidson to admit a lot of things, including that he, you know, was responsible for the Hulk Hogan sex tape. And, you know, basically every sex tape you've ever heard of that's ever been made public, he's behind it. Not a big sex tape, man.

I hope Keith Davidson better not have been behind that leak that targeted poor Jamal Murray. Don's behind it. Not a big sex tape man. I hope Keith Davidson better not have been behind that leak that targeted poor Jamal Murray. Don't Google that. Don't Google the Jamal Murray leak. It didn't show up in the discussion, I just want to say. But don't bet against Keith Davidson being involved. If there's a sex tape, he's probably made some money from it. You know, a $2 million payout from Charlie Sheen that he doesn't remember. I mean, the guy's a piece of work. They've done a pretty good job at setting up like Trump was being extorted by some nasty people. There's other arguments, too. The second component is the idea that Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels are people you shouldn't believe.

That's the main thing they're trying to get from this cross. The problem with that is that they haven't settled on a you shouldn't believe them because I didn't do it or you shouldn't believe it because I did do it, but their story is lies about this, that, or the other. Right? Correct. And also, I mean, they're throwing a

lot of spaghetti at the wall, and the same piece of spaghetti doesn't have to stick for each juror, right? They only need one juror. Got it. Fair. So, the third component, which is the one that I think the accountants really took apart, is the idea that sometimes a payment for legal services is just a payment for legal services. Michael Cohen was the president's personal lawyer. And I think it is very difficult to listen to these two, one accounts payable woman and one controller, and come away from it not thinking, oh, there was a scheme here to pay Michael Cohen back $420,000 and spread it out over a year and disguise it as legal fees. And so I think to the extent that they're relying on that third component of the defense,

I think that got damaged this week. All right, closing out with Hope Hicks. She cried, I guess. She did cry. Why? I couldn't get good context from these stories. Was she crying because she still loves Donald Trump and she feels like she's betraying him or because just the stress of the situation and the memories or what's happening? It was genuinely unclear to me. It happened right after the direct examination had ended, the cross-examination starts, and she's asked a perfectly pedestrian set of questions, and she goes to pieces. So it's clearly more about what happened at the end of the direct examination

than what happened at the beginning of the cross, which was friendly. I think the answer is, I'm not sure about this, that she found very upsetting the last line of questioning. And I got to say, thinking about it afterwards, I understand why she would find it upsetting. It's not a betrayal of Trump, but it's an extremely unflattering piece of information that she gave up. And that was that in 2018 in the White House, he says to her, first of all, acknowledges that Michael Cohen gave this payment, says to her that he did it out of the goodness of his heart. He wasn't directed to. He wasn't. He just did it on his heart. He wasn't directed to, he just did it on his own. And that Trump regarded it as a real show of loyalty and something that was meaningful to him. So that was the first thing.

So revealing that he in fact knew that Cohen had done this, at least in 2018. The second component of that conversation is that he says, and this is, I think, the part that is, I mean, no single piece of information is going to decide this case, but this is an important piece of information. He says, I'm glad he did it because I'd rather be dealing with this now, meaning in the White House, now here than in November and October of 2016. And she's real clear about this. And she's looking right at him when she says it. And that's the election interference component of it, right? We successfully kept this. Just to be clear for people trying to understand that. So we're 2018 at this in the white house in the white house he's already won

and he's saying i'm glad we're dealing with this now not in october of 2016 right before the election when it could have damaged me yeah right in other words michael cohen did this he claims even in this conversation not at my direction on his own out of the goodness of his heart however much goodness there may be in his heart he did this and I am glad he did it and I'm glad he did it because we're dealing with this now having won rather than this having affected the outcome of the election And so if you think about whenever you listen to testimony in a criminal case, you never listen to the testimony itself alone. You should always have in your head the way the prosecutor or the defense lawyer is going to talk about that testimony in

closing arguments, right? And so here, you're going to say this is Donald Trump admitting to his most trusted communications aid that this was an election interference effort. It was intended that way. And in his judgment, it worked and it was successful. And I think that's the significance of Hope Hicks' testimony. And she does that. The prosecution turns her over to the defense. He asks her a perfectly pedestrian question and she went to pieces. I can't say I feel a lot of empathy for Hope. Okay, tough titties. Empathy doesn't enter into it. But there is like one empathy issue with respect to Hope that you should think about, which is that the jury is going to find her a very appealing witness. You know, none of the reasons that you, and for that matter, I would say a thing like, I'm not going to spend

any time having empathy for Hope Hicks. None of that is on display in the court. She comes in, she's extremely polished. She's in all the ways that we know Hope Hicks to be polished, right? She's very communicative with both the defense and the prosecution. She's not belligerent. She's a good witness. And so you say if you're a minimally involved person who has only a limited sense of all this, which is what you have to be in order to be a juror in this case, and you see Hope Hicks saying that, your empathy is not where Tim Miller's empathy is here, and that this is a very appealing person on her face. Okay, finally, just briefly, versus what your perception was of the likelihood that a guilty

verdict is rendered at the beginning of the trial versus right now, Do you feel about the same, more likely, less likely? I mean, obviously, you can't get in the head of these jurors, but just your impressions of that. I always thought the case was likely to be pretty strong. So I'm not super surprised at its strength. There are areas where it's stronger than I expected it to be, particularly in the forensics area. The accounting forensics are

really, really bad for Trump. And there are also areas that I still actually think we need to learn something from the rest of the case. And so the areas that the case is weakest so far are on Trump's personal direction of either side of the stories, either his personal direction to Cohen to make this payment or his personal direction to Allen Weisselberg to reimburse the payment. The idea that the payment happened, that it was corrupt, that there was an effort to interfere with the election, that is quite well established. The idea that the reimbursement was done in a fashion that violated New York law, that's pretty clearly done. Getting Donald Trump's fingerprints on both of those things is going to be the tough part of the case for the prosecution.

Especially because they're such tiny little fingers. Okay, Ben Wittes, thank you so much for coming back on the Borg podcast. Anytime, man. Wittes is our man in Amsterdam, our man at the Trump trial. We'll be having him back here again soon. Make sure to go check out that Lawfare podcast. I'll put it in the show notes. We'll be back on the other side with Congressman Ro Khanna. His district is located in my old neck of the woods, Silicon Valley. Thanks for coming on the Bullwark Podcast, sir.

I've been wanting to do this for a while. I've been wanting to come on for a while, so great to be on. Great. Our initial plan here, when we first started email emailing was to have a broad, high-minded conversation about the state of the Democratic Party and populism, and hopefully we'll have some time for some of that, but the news gods have intervened, unfortunately. So we got to talk news first. I'd like to start with the president's interview with CNN last night.

He said that if Israel invades the city of Rafah, the U.S. will stop supplying it with artillery shells, bombs for fighter jets, and other offensive weapons. You'd voted against aid for Israel, I think, on these same grounds. So why don't you talk about his announcement and what you think about what the president said last night on CNN? Well, the president basically affirmed what 37 Democrats who voted no on offensive weapons to Netanyahu were saying. What we were saying is you can't keep arming Netanyahu with offensive weapons if he's going to Rafah and defy the United States and where we continue to have massive civilian loss of life. So the president's position now is consistent with the 37 Democrats who voted no, and I think

it's a welcome shift. Well, there are more Democrats who have voted yes. Richie Torres last night says America cannot claim that its commitment to Israel is ironclad and then proceed to withhold aid. Fetterman said it was deeply disappointing. They weren't alone. There are some others. What do you say to your colleagues who are arguing that this is sending the wrong signal to our ally that faced an attack, a devastating attack from Hamas and whorators who committed October 7th. And Israel systematically degraded Hamas, but by the end of November, by Thanksgiving, they had degraded a lot of Hamas's military capability. The question now is, how are you going to get the hostages back? And how are you going to end the loss of life and have some security in that region. My view, and not just my view, but many of the Israeli hostages themselves and people protesting there, is that the best way to get the hostages back is to get a deal for

a ceasefire. I think going into Rafah precludes that deal. I think it puts the hostage families at risk. And I also think that you're never going to be able to eliminate Hamas. They've got 20,000 to 30,000 fighters. You can degrade Hamas. But to have new governance there, you need a permanent ceasefire. And then the Saudis and UAE and Egypt and Israel working with the Palestinians on new governance. That to me is in Israel's long-term security. It may not be Netanyahu's vision,

but I think it is the vision of probably more of the labor tradition in Israel. clamps on the different types of weaponry they can use, the different types of offensive actions they can use, actually doesn't limit the war, it prolongs it, was Fromm's argument. The others said that it makes it harder to get, less likely that the hostages will be released. It makes Hamas feel that they've more resolved, they can survive for longer. What's your pushback to that? Like this idea that this is showing weakness and that it might actually prolong the war? Well, we've tried the other way, and it's gone on seven months. I mean, we've given Netanyahu a blank check. The war hasn't ended. The hostages haven't come home. So obviously, that way hasn't worked. The crux of the disagreement, I mean, the crux of the disagreement, I don't think there's any moral equivalence of it. Hamas is a terrorist organization.

I strongly disagree with Netanyahu, but Israel is a democratic country. There's no moral equivalence. What Hamas did was wrong on October 7th. But the crux of the disagreements and the negotiations is that Hamas wants a permanent end to the war. Netanyahu is saying, no, even if we get the hostages, we want to be able to go into Rafah. The language that was used was sustainable calm, trying to appease both sides. But the essence of the decision that we have to make is, will Netanyahu be willing to live with an end to the war, having destroyed a lot of Hamas's capability, if he gets the hostages back? I think that it makes sense in this context. And then to have a diplomatic effort to find new governance, recognizing that not everyone would have been brought to accountability

and it's a difficult decision. But that's really the issue. And philosophically, I think Netanyahu or the people on the right would say, no, that's not enough. We need to get the Hamas leadership out. You had a conversation at the University of Wisconsin with a broad array of students about the war. I want to play a little bit from that conversation and get your thoughts

on the other side. Gaza's not a huge place, but Hamas could have told all of its civilians to go what? To go to southern Gaza. The worst massacre in all of Gaza

in six months was in Rafah, the safe place that they told them. Now they're saying they want to invade Rafah. Where should they go now? Back to the north where they're still bombing? What to you is the uncrossed?

It easily could have been. It could have been my family or some of my best friends that were kidnapped from Israel. What would the line be for me to say, you guys can keep them? I have no idea. Civilians are dying. At what point is it on Hamas to say, okay, we give up, have your hostages back, we'll dismantle? You can't expect diplomacy from people living under the thumb of occupation.

That's never their response. You know, everybody's using Hamas as a kind of justification to do all that kind of stuff that's happening. But what happened before Hamas took over? How were those people treated? I was aghast at this government before the war started. It's not one that represents my sense of Judaism, my sense of Zionism, meaning the state of Israel has a right to exist, that there should be a Palestinian state. But does anyone want to weigh in on Biden's policies and the critiques? The sooner there's a ceasefire, the more lives are being

saved. So the fact that he's very against that is very tough to see. I have Jewish friends that are left-leaning that have voted Democrat that will no longer vote for Joe Biden because, you know, maybe they feel betrayed. They feel like he doesn't represent their interests in the best way anymore. I guess before we get into the specifics of what the kids were arguing, what was your impression of that conversation? It seems like you had a pretty wide-ranging ideological group there. And we hear that these conversations are getting shut down on campuses. So what was your experience? I was quite inspired and impressed by the students. Remember, there are 4,000 campuses and colleges in the United States. We hear about the stuff

going on in Michigan and Columbia, but in many classrooms, I think there are more type of conversations like the ones I had. And if people look at the clip, it's not just the students who are all supportive of Palestine. The Jewish American students there are very, very supportive of what the Israeli war cabinet is doing. They blame Hamas clearly for the conflict. But there is a respectful, passionate exchange of ideas. One of the Jewish students talks about losing a cousin on October 7th. She is moved when a Palestinian student says every day she calls her mother to find out how many more family members of hers died in Gaza. Now, do I think that there were some kumbaya moment and they have a future Middle East plan? No, but it's breaking down some of the barriers.

It's figuring out how we talk to each other so that the conflicts in the Middle East aren't splitting us further in America. I thought it was really moving and enjoyed the whole audio. People can go find it. We'll put the full video in the show notes for people that wanted more. One thing I've, people have been critical of me on, from the left and talking about these protests is we're a bunch of never Trumpers, right? We come from the background of, we were in a party where there was a group of people that we thought were, you know, the crazy ones that we were keeping down in the basement that were, you know, making cruel, bigoted, dehumanizing arguments at times.

We, you know, enabled that, I think, in a lot of ways. And I look back with that, with regret that I didn't speak out about that. And so, I feel like I come to this discussion of the campus protests with that baggage or that perspective, however you want to look at it. And I'm frustrated that I see people on the progressive left sometimes making the same mistake, where there were students in that conversation who had very strong disagreements with Israel's actions, but were making substantive arguments. But there are a lot of people on these campuses that are making arguments about how intifada is justified, you know, anti-Semitic arguments, eliminationist arguments. Do you think that, you know, folks that have your point of view more progressive on this issue have like an obligation

to do some self-policing on that? Yes. In fact, I'm going to be giving a major speech. I'm getting a award at the Arab American Civil Rights League on May 16th in Dearborn, Michigan in front of 500 to 700 Muslim and Arab Americans. And one of the first lines in my speech is going to be, I would give the same remarks here as I would give at the ADL or the AJC. And I talk about how there should be zero tolerance and a strict rejection of any anti-Semitism or Islamophobia, but certainly chanting Zionists don't deserve to live or globalize the Intifada or this space is not open to Jews. It has chilling reminiscence of anti-Semitism in European and American universities and should be condemned. That doesn't mean that we can't recognize the broader sentiment of young people who are out

there because they see too many people dying and they want an end to the war. And at their best, they represent the anti-Vietnam, anti-apartheid, anti-Iraq war protests. But one of the things I talk about is Satyagraha, which my grandfather spent four years in jail alongside Gandhi's independence movement. And Gandhi and Satyagraha, which was about truth, force, and nonviolence, talks about having to speak out about your own side's bigotry first and loudly. And King did that. Lewis did that. So I think that the protesters lose a moral force when they aren't condemning obvious bigotry on their own side. That's refreshing. I concur with that. What is going to be your message in Dearborn? You know, you hear a lot. It's hard for me to kind of grasp how much of this is social media

performance and how much of this is real. But, you know, there's a lot of buzz that Joe Biden's losing altitude, that there's folks in the Arab American community that are going to refuse to vote for him, despite the just a plain obvious fact that the person that proposed the Muslim ban would be a worse option for the country and for the Muslim community. Hey, how do you assess that threat? Does Joe Biden have a big threat in that community? And if so, how are you speaking to folks in that community about why they should come around despite their reservations?

Well, there are two points. The larger point of what I'm going to say is that we need a new political dialogue here and that we do need protests to call out our own side so that we don't devolve into violent, toxic attacks on ethnicity. And I think we need to be doing that in places that are not comfortable. So I could easily give an anti-Semitism speech to the AJC. But raising some of those issues in Dearborn, I think is going to have more impact and vice versa on Islamophobia. On Biden himself, I say, look, the president is obviously moving. I mean, you may disagree with

what he said last night. Others will agree. But it would be hard pressed to think that the protests and the progressive left and the Muslim and Arab American community and people critical of his policies haven't had an impact. I mean, look at where he was seven months ago. Look at where he is today. His language yesterday was echoed the exact statement that 37 Democrats who voted against the offensive aid put out. So I would say, look, look, with Biden, you at least have impact. Do you think Donald Trump would care at all about your sentiments on Gaza or civil rights in this country? Absolutely not. And we have to recognize the stakes and be pragmatic. Is that true, though? Do you think that Biden has moved because of pressure from the left? I'm not sure that that's true. I think that he's moved because of the facts on the ground in Israel, and frankly, around the

world. He's been like one of the last world leaders to stick by, you know, Bibi unapologetically. And, you know, like you said, things have changed over the last seven months, like isn't just the reality of the war, what has driven has changed more more than trying to appeal to the political side? Or maybe not. I don't know. What do you think? I don't think it's a crude calculation. I don't think he's saying, oh, I need to appease some part of the base. But I think he has heard from lawmakers over and over again, from people in the Arab and Muslim American community, from young people about the toll that is taking place in Gaza, about the loss of human life. I think he has been made aware that some of his rhetoric early on didn't have enough empathy for

the loss of life of innocents in Gaza. And I think there has been a critique that he gave too much of a blank check to Netanyahu. Now, I'm not in his head. I can tell you that most politicians aren't immune from public sentiment. And I'm sure it's a combination of the facts on the ground is conviction and hearing from people in a democracy. Some people might say, well, is that Craven? I said, no, that's what's supposed to happen in a democracy. You're supposed to listen to public sentiment as well. Abraham Lincoln said public sentiment is everything. One more thing on Biden on this.

I don't know what the political calculation is. I kind of laugh when people are like he's making biden on this i don't know what the political calculation is i kind of laugh when people like he's making political calculations on this and the biden coalition that he's going to need in november ranges from people that would be like pretty happy for gaza to be completely leveled like some some folks in my world some neo former neocon anti-trump types all the way to people that think that israel is an apartheid state and would be happy to see the Israeli government dismantled and everywhere in between. Like the Biden coalition on this issue could not be more divided, could not be more far apart. Like what's he supposed to do?

How does he think about this issue politically, do you think? First, if I could just clarify my position because I'm two states and I believe that Israel should exist. I was not meaning to lump you in with the dismantle the Israeli government part. You have to admit there are going to be some of those people that have that view that vote for Joe Biden this year because he's a better option than Donald Trump. Sure. And, you know, I agree with your characterization of the coalition that's going to be with Biden. I just want to put my stake is I'm sort of center, I would say center left. I believe Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish democratic state. That is what Zionism means, that why shouldn't the Jewish people have one state if so many other people have the right to self-determination? But I am against the occupation in the West Bank and

in Gaza and believe there should be a Palestinian state and a two-state solution. Now, easier to say than to implement, but that's, you know, that's where Barack and, you know, the Labor, Rabin and Perez's is where I am. I guess what I would say is that the biggest thing that the president needs to do, and I know this is hard, is to figure out how to end the war and free the hostages. You know, you don't get graded on a curve. You're president of the United States. It's gone on seven months. I think most people are saying, end it. You know, if Burns can't do it, send someone who can. Send Clinton, send Obama, figure out how do we end the war. And I think for Biden, the political calculation is how do I get the hostages out and end the war? And I think that the challenge, and it's reflected in his approval ratings across

the spectrum, is people are just unhappy because there's an ongoing war uh people are seeing killing and that's why being president united states to the toughest job in the world you voted against the uh the tiktok ban i did i'm yeah i'm pretty for the tiktok ban i don't think that we would let china like own nbc for example so i'm not sure why we should let them own one of the biggest social media platforms in the country and i care more about the algorithm than I do about the privacy side of things. You know, I had somebody on the podcast a couple weeks ago that said that he thought that part of the motivation behind the TikTok ban was that a lot of folks in Congress were concerned about the anti-Israel sentiment and that that was a motivator. I sort of pushed back on that, thought

that maybe that was a little conspiratorial. There's a lot of negative feedback from our listeners on this point. Then Mitt Romney last week basically says this, like in an interview, like Mitt Romney basically, what do you think about this? I put out a TikTok video on Mitt Romney's clip that went viral. I mean, it was shocking. I mean, Romney basically was like, yeah, we all voted against or for the ban because people were talking too much about Palestinian issues. And I said, that's viewpoint censorship. That's exactly why I had First Amendment concerns. Look, if you wanted to have a law say the Chinese government should have zero role in algorithms in America. Absolutely. All people criminally accountable at Oracle or TikTok for any interference from the chinese government or any foreign government if you want to have a law on a data of privacy fine if you wanted to stop tiktok from coming

into through the syphius process before it became an app fine but you can't have this app with 170 million americans and then have romney say well we think too many americans are saying things that are pro-palestine so now we're going to shut down the app. And young people feel like we finally have an app where we have a voice. The older generation is saying, go get active. Now we're active. And now they don't like what we're saying, so they're going to shut us down. You know, that's very different than saying, don't go yell anti-Semitic obscenities at your classmates or block Jewish students from getting into the classroom. There should be consequences. But come on, you're engaged in speech on TikTok?

How do you think about the free speech issue? I don't know. I'm directionally for speech, but I just always have to laugh at like the Elon's, some of your pals over there that are like, well, I'm just for unfettered free. Nobody's for unfettered free speech, okay? Anybody who's ever been on a message board online knows that you have to have moderation. If you don't have moderation, the message board is going to turn into porn and ad hominem and fake accounts, right?

There has to be some kind of limiting principle or else, you know, look what happened to Craigslist, right? There's a reason nobody uses Craigslist anymore because everybody on there is a scammer or, you know, so you have to have some kind of limiting principle. What is it for you? What is the limiting principle on free speech on tech platforms? Well, I think there are two different questions. One is, what is the limiting principle on the First Amendment, which is when can the

government come in and stop the speech or take it down? That's a higher bar that I think has to be the incitement to violence or illegal conduct. But then there is something below that, which is a moderation on a technology platform. And there I think you should have reasonable standards of not engaging in religious or bigotry or ethnic bigotry, not dehumanizing other people on the platform. And I think it's perfectly appropriate for tech companies, and they should have those standards to monitor conversation. You know, if it was that easy, then we could just have unambiguous, unrestricted speech and sort of the world would be better. We would never have needed a political philosophy. I mean, just everyone talks, everything will be

better. No, I mean, we created town halls and institutions and Congress may not be perfect, because we have to think about how do you talk to each other and listen to each other and resolve difference. And I think there's a tech utopianism that has gone astray where people just think they put up these platforms, let everyone talk and somehow democracy will be better. And what we're seeing oftentimes it's not, it's worse. Do you see that in your personal relationships?

I mean, if everybody in the Democratic House democratic house at least by reputation you're their representative so you talk to elon you talk to some of these you know tech titans it does feel like there's been a radicalization over the past few years in this crowd in a way that's pretty alarming i mean there was a puck reported there's a meeting between Musk and Sachs and some of these other folks about supporting Trump. What underlies all this? These people have the most influence, the most wealth of any category of people in the history of the world. What are they so angry about? Can you provide any insight into why we're seeing the right-wing folks in Silicon Valley go down a radicalization pipeline? Or am I overstating it, do you think, maybe? 95% are still very supportive of progressives and Democrats.

Remember, you know, I represent that district and I co-chair Bernie Sanders's campaign and I still get a lot of support. So it's not that it's all gone right wing. But I will say that there are some of the most prominent voices, Elon, Marc Andreessen, Dave Tax, others who have gone more to the right. And the question then is why and how. Some of it has been a critique on foreign policy where they think that the America has been too involved overseas that, you know, I disagree with some of them on Ukraine. But this is ridiculous.

You can't alibi them on this. David Sachs was for the Iraq war. This is like, this is not it. That can't be it. It must be something. I'm telling you what they tell me. I'm not defending them. And certainly I don't agree with their view on Ukraine. I voted for the Ukraine aid. Some of it, I think, is the sense that they want to be contrarian. I mean, look, when you're a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, you get there by going against the grain and thinking about something that's totally different than what everyone else thinks. And that may work to be a great entrepreneur and startup probably doesn't work when you're talking about leading the world's greatest democracy. So some of it is a contrarianism, and some of it is this, they're concerned with what they call, quote, unquote, identity politics, wokeness. They think that there has been a compromise of what they would define as excellence. The irony is that the valley itself is filled with diversity. It's partly what's allowed, in my view, excellence. And I think that they have a misunderstanding of that. And if anything, we've been too exclusive as a valley. We don't have enough women. We don't enough African-American, Latino Americans. We need to do a better job.

You know, they are probably on the opposite side of me on the question of race and gender and some of those issues. You got around to it. I'm not giving them credit on the Ukraine thing. That's contrarian as I'm coming in. I refuse to believe that that's David Sachs's principled position. Let's end with Marjorie. We'll do Marjorie's little dessert at the end. All right. So let's do some of our high-minded discussion that we wanted to get into. You have pushed for what you call economic patriotism, a new economic patriotism. You have kind of an agenda associated with that. I'm about halfway with you on the agenda. So why don't you explain what you mean? Yeah, why don't you explain what you mean? And then we can hash it out a little bit.

The central story, I think, of this country has been that for 50 years, you've had wealth pile up in my district, in the hands of people like Elon Musk, New York and Seattle. And we watched as town after town was hollowed out. We lost steel, we lost aluminum, we lost textiles, and no one really cared what was happening to places, unfortunately, like Youngstown, Ohio or Johnstown, Pennsylvania. They were told, go move, go get another job, go become a coder. And slowly, the American dream started to slip away. And we've gone from 50th in income inequality to 128th. China is at 77. European countries are in the 30s. And so I think there's this opportunity, actually, with AI, with technology, to re-industrialize America, to go to places like Johnstown and have modern steel plants, modern factories that bring back

high-paying jobs, good jobs that don't all require a college degree, that bring back industry so people in those towns understand those jobs, their parents or grandparents had them. We can be honest that the new steel plants aren't going to have blast furnaces with 4,500 people. They may have 1,000 people because some of it is going to be robotics and automation, but that's precisely what's allowing us to re-industrialize America, marrying sort of Silicon Valley software, ingenuity, technology with the industrial know-how of places, and to spread the economic opportunity of these new jobs into the Black South, into Latino communities. I believe that the economic revitalization of the country can help bring the American dream back, also help bring some

commonality to places that don't really talk to each other. All right, I'm directionally with you. Almost everything you said right there, I'm with you on. I worry about a couple things. One is the implementation of it, particularly, you know, from folks on the left. I think that you're already seeing this a little bit. I was for the CHIPS Act for a lot of the reasons you just laid out for, you know, a lot of the things in the IRA for the reasons you just laid out. Like we're already seeing big delays because of various permitting requirements, varying rules and restrictions, what kind of hiring they can do. I'm for DEI and the woke stuff. I'm not with Elon and them on that. But I do think that when we're putting when the woke stuff. I'm not with Elon and them on that. But I do think that

when we're putting when the government top down is putting a lot of rules and what is needed for these sorts of factories, like that's slowing it down, that's hurting competitiveness, that's raising prices. Like, what do you say to that critique of the left that it's like, that's a nice directional thing to say we should build in these communities, but it's hard to actually do it because of all the rules and regulations. Look, I think, one, we have done it historically from Hamilton to Lincoln to FDR, so it's possible. The administrative state wasn't quite as big back during Hamilton's day, you know? There was no CEQA. And I certainly won't defend all of CEQA in California. The challenge is, look, I helped write the Chips and tags. So that's what I know well, because I work with Schubert Young on it.

And I know Intel very well, which is in my district in Gelsinger. And here was what they would tell you are the two delays there. They wouldn't say it's permitting, though I'm all for smart expediting of permitting in key areas. They would say the two things were that it took commerce almost a year to give out the money because there were so many red tape forms of what you had to fill out. And the bureaucracy was huge

and the bureaucracy actually made it. So you have to be a multinational corporation. And there were so many lawyers involved that were so scared that if they gave the money and something went wrong, that it would be the next Solyndra. So I think we need a better, more efficient way of getting the resources out to partner with the private sector. And then the second thing is the workforce. I mean, the biggest

obstacle to doing this is having actually the workforce ready to be able to implement it. Some of it requires immigration as well. Now you're speaking my language. Now you're speaking my language. You know, I mean, if we go offshore to the chips industry to Taiwan, and the reality is there are a lot of Taiwanese who understand that process, we need some of those folks to help in implementing the industrialization. And, you know, of course, we probably want to think about what the relationship is with labor. An American company has a better understanding.

TSMC has struggled in Arizona, partly because they had no basis, no understanding of how to work with labor. And so, of course, we do things differently here than other companies. But I think those expectations should be set right in the beginning. All that to say is, though, it's not a critique of the Biden administration, because they're trying to do something that hasn't been done in 40, 50 years. The CHIPS Act actually was an idea for Trump administration. Trump just doesn't even realize enough to take credit for it. It was this guy, Keith Crouch, in the undersecretary of Secretary of State who came up with the idea. So I think what we need to do is learn from these experiences and get better. What about the more free market side of

this? That sure, globalization has hollowed out certain communities, but quality of life overall has improved. Boats have been lifted. People are annoyed with inflation already. Tariffs, limiting imports from countries with cheaper labor is going to make everything more expensive for everybody. What's your pushback on that argument? Well, look, the quality of life has certainly improved for people in China and other parts of the world, which is not a bad thing. I mean, when you tell the story historically that it's lifted the boats of millions in America, though, even in America, I mean, I can, I need this little dongle here for my new microphone. And, you know, I called up amazon.com. It was here in about 12 hours.

That's pretty nice. It cost about $4. That would not have been the case, you know, in 1960. Sure. And for someone like me, I grew up middle class. I've done well now. But the idea that you could have a phone on you where you could watch almost any sports game and you could watch movies, I mean, that was unthinkable. And so for certain things, of course, prices have come down. But the trade-off has been that for the cost of the ticket items, health care, child care, education, those haven't come down. Those have gone up much faster than inflation. So consumer goods have gone down. And for a lot of people, the incomes have stagnated. And this is why a lot of people, the incomes have stagnated. And this is why, you know, a lot of people feel the American dream has slipped away.

So am I for rejecting globalization? No. Am I for rebalancing it? Yes. Why do we need massive structural trade deficits with China? Why can't we have a situation where we have some self-reliance, but we also have trade and certain things? Yes, it helps bring down

the cost of goods, but other things we want to have domestic industry. So I guess I would say it was done in a way that didn't look at the severe impacts. And even Larry Summers and others have now had papers saying, you know, we went too fast. We didn't realize what it would do to factory towns. And so if there's an overcorrection on the other side, I think that'll get us to balance as opposed to worrying that we're going to go into some protectionist mode. To be continued on that. What about the political side of this? There's like a what's the matter with Kansas argument that, sure, the Democrats should do this. Maybe it's the right policy. Let's just grant that it's the right policy. Put those disagreements aside. Say that politically, though, it's not really going to help

that rural America is against the Democrats because of culture issues, because of the media environment that they're in. You know, there's a poll out this week that said that only 40% of voters give Biden credit for doing more on infrastructure. 37% give credit to Trump. Maybe these people just can't be reached. What do you say to that? Well, I say it wasn't that long ago, up to 2016, that Barack Obama was carrying these places overwhelmingly. I guess my view, and maybe it's a naive view, is any single person who has pulled the lever for Barack Hussein Obama is a gettable vote. I start with that premise. And then I say, okay, like when Ro Khanna is showing up in Johnstown,

Pennsylvania to talk about, let's bring modern steel back, are they going to vote for the Democratic Party because of steel? Or am I doing something else? Am I saying to them, look, I get why you're upset. I get why you don't see yourself or your kids in the future of America. I understand what brings pride to this community. I understand what you want for your future and their kids' future. And I want to work with you to build that common sense of America. So the economic can be cultural. It's about showing up. It's about understanding. It's about saying, what are the things you want? I don't think it's as simplistic as saying, now, if I was just there like, look, well, let's give you more money, that probably wouldn't work. But it's about understanding

the hurt of cultural pride in these communities showing up and saying, I want to earn your vote, and I believe in you, and I believe most of the people here are good, decent people who, even though I'm an Indian American of Hindu faith, aren't going to be like Ann Coulter and say, I'll never support you and are more reasonable in America. Did you see that? That's crazy. I just saw that before we started that she went on Vivek's podcast and said she agrees on everything but wouldn't vote for him because he's an Indian. I think that she's doing this for attention.

So maybe we should give it to her. But this is like sick stuff. I'm so happy I'm free of these people. All right. You have another political reform act. I'm also halfway with you on it. We're running out of time. So we're just going to stipulate the agreements.

Ban PAC and lobbyist donations. Cool. Ban members of Congress from becoming lobbyists. Now I'm really excited. Ban members of Congress from stock trading. I don't know. I'm just okay on that one. And being with Matt Gaetz, that's a mark against you on that one.

But we can talk about that one. The enact term limits for member of Congress. This is where I'm really against you. Have you seen the quality of people that the Republicans are putting up? Do we really need to be cycling through quicker? I think that right now we have a shortage, just looking at this from an Adam Smith standpoint, we have a shortage of quality supply of good members of Congress. I don't know that we need to be restricting the supply. So give me the counter view to that. So actually, the first few were the ones I'm most passionate about, and maybe that would change it. The challenge with if you don't have the banning PAC money, if you don't have campaign finance reform, you basically have

these seats for almost life if you're in the same district. The Economist did a study that the turnover rate in the U.S. Congress was less than European monarchies in terms of the transition of monarchical families in Europe. I ran three times to get into Congress. I had to run against an incumbent of my own party. All three times that I ran, Nancy Pelosi endorsed against me. Obama once endorsed against me, even though I worked for him. And I saw how hard it is for someone to break into politics. I was able to do it because I had a lot of fortune and breaks coming from Silicon Valley and access to capital and access to people and it's still so hard. And I guess I've seen that the system is so rigged against people who are outsiders that either you have to unrig the system and with the funding and campaigning, or we need some kind of term limits. And I'm open

to whether that's 12 years, 18 years, and having a new generation of talent. The final point I'd say is, you can't really look at the last 40 years of governments and be like, wow, you know, the greatest moment of American history. I mean, the American dream has declined. We've gotten into a lot of foreign policy blunders. And so I'm not so sure that having a new generation have a shot at politics isn't a good thing. This is where my conservative impulse just contrasts with yours, Congressman. You know, you have the progressive doe-eyed, things could get better. And I'm like, things could get worse. I look at the last 40 years, and I'm like, eh, maybe we should just stick. All right. I'm a little concerned about the potential risks ahead of us.

Speaking of the potential risks of people coming in, we did have Marjorie Taylor Greene, the great congresswoman from Northwest Georgia, really humiliate herself yesterday on the House floor. So we can laugh about that if we want. But I'm curious, you know, you were one of the first to come out and say, no, you'll protect Mike Johnson, you will not vote to vacate. Why did you make that decision? What was different about this case than McCarthy for you? I actually just thought Mike Johnson did the right thing. I mean, I know it seems so simple, but I thought here he is under a lot of pressure. And, you know, he had the guts to put out a

Ukraine bill for a vote. He separated the bills, Ukraine, Taiwan, Israel, which I thought was actually admirable because it allowed people to vote their conscience. Some of the left said, well, he's putting up an Israel bill. I said, he should. You know, that's the whole point of Congress. We can vote no. We have 37 who voted no, but you shouldn't have these things for a vote. And people said, well, what are you getting from him? I said, well, why does everything in politics have to be transactional? They said, well, he worked with Trump to overturn the election, and he has these antiquated views on gay rights. I said, look, I don't agree with him on a lot of things. But in this case, he did the right thing,

and he doesn't deserve to be tossed out. And I was really happy to see the overwhelming vote for him. Do you sometimes feel a burden that like you guys have to be the grownups? There aren't a lot of examples of the inverse, right? Like there aren't a lot of examples of Mike Lawler and these other guys saying, you know, I'm just going to do the right thing. I'm going to give Joe Biden attaboy on this one. Where are those people? You talk to your Republican colleagues. Do they not just disappoint you daily and their unwillingness to kind of do the right thing in a lot of these cases? I guess Mike Johnson did on Ukraine, but outside of that, there are not a lot of examples. Well, they're all hanging out at a bar with Liz Cheney wondering what happened to the Republican

party. But there aren't closets. Some people say they're closet Liz Cheney's there. And I don't know, you talk to Republicans about as much as anybody in the halls of Congress, kind of would snicker at Trump, even though he was the president of the United States, be embarrassed, crack jokes. And that's much, much, much less today. Donald Trump has a greater grip on the Republican Party today in the House than he did in 2017. And that's why it's so scary if the country puts him back into the presidency. And I think that he has a lot more people who are afraid to speak out. They've seen the fate of people like Liz Cheney or Adam Kizik, who have spoken out, and you have far, far less dissent,

even in private. I mean, people are very, very careful. Look at Mike Gallagher, who was one of the people I was actually very fond of in Congress. He comes out and he makes one decision, which is that he's not going to vote for the impeachment of Mayorkas. I don't mind saying this. I saw Gallagher in the hallway. I said, for Mayorkas? You're giving up your career for Mayorkas? No one even, you know, no one's heard of the Mayorkas or something. But up your career for Mayorkas? No one even, you know, no one's talking about Mayorkas or something. But he was principled about it. Obviously, Mayorkas shouldn't be impeached. Wait a minute, though. Wait a minute, though.

Wait a minute. Mike Gallagher didn't give up his career for Mayorkas. He gave up his career because he was too wimpy to actually fight for it. He could have survived. Like, doesn't that frustrate you? Don't you look at Mike Gallagher and say, what are you doing? Like, we need people like you. Why are you throwing in the towel and going to work for Palantir? Why don't you actually just stand on your principles and run in a primary? He couldn't have survived a primary because it was my workers vote. I don't believe that. I think he could have survived a primary. I think he could have probably survived it with a very, very hard, hard fight.

Life is hard. You're in Congress. You're a public servant. Come on. I wish he would have fought. I would have supported him. I don't know if it would have mattered in a primary. I would have supported him. I think he was a thoughtful Republican. But yeah, look, you need more people on that side willing to stand up. And certainly, God forbid, if Trump gets elected, you're going to need that. And I don't see it. I don't see it. And I am a student of, like, you probably have history, and you look at Lincoln, and one of the geniuses of Lincoln was that he always knew where to push, but where to understand the party and how to navigate that. And I'm not comparing my Gallagher to Lincoln, but I thought

there are people like Gallagher were operating within the system. They weren't Cheney, they weren't Kissinger, they were doing sort of what they needed to do. And then you would think, okay, they're going to strike to move in the right direction. And that's the question. I mean, are there those people? And they're becoming fewer and fewer. Yeah. I'm in the middle of watching some Lincoln stuff right now.

And they definitely are not Lincoln. I do agree with you on that. But yeah, the push and pull, it's interesting. It's an interesting time to look at because there are some parallels. Okay, we're over time. I was supposed to get into medical debt, but I'm not really sure my opinion on it yet. You have a new proposal out to cancel medical debt. You know, my old instincts are blanching at that, but I want to actually think about it before I offer an opinion. So people can read your, you know, put out some material on that. People can read that. We can maybe come back and have a longer discussion on that, some of the other issues. And maybe, I guess my final question is, might you come back because

you're thinking about running for a different office? Are you thinking about running for anything else? Or are you happy in the House of Representatives? Well, it depends if we have future elections, right? How worried are you about that? Look, I'm hugely hopeful about the American story. You can't not be. If you're a son of Indian immigrants, you have a grandfather who spent years in jail with God, and the parents immigrate here, born in Philadelphia at the age of 40, get elected to represent Silicon Valley, arguably the most wealthy, innovative place in the world. Obviously, you believe in America. And I think we're an incredible country that's overcome 250 years of slavery, that overcame tyranny, that overcame the Civil War, that overcame civil

rights. So do I think that a clownish billionaire entertainer is going to end American democracy? No. And one of the things I talked about leadership is some of the Democratic Party, like, let's have a more confidence. I mean, if you're on a plane and there's turbulence, do you want your pilot saying, gosh, we're going to crash, we're going to crash, we're going to crash? Or do you want your pilot saying we're going to get to the other side, and it's going to be a stronger democracy? So I think we're going to prevail. But I think that Donald Trump is going to do tremendous damage if he wins to the country in four years, and he's going to erode voting rights and make it harder to emerge as a multiracial democracy.

That's a good place to end. Thank you, Congressman Ro Khanna. We 100% agree on that. This is great. Come back soon. We can chop it up a little bit more. I really appreciate it, having some thoughtful folks in Congress. I don't want you term limited out.

I want you to stay, okay? Because I don't know what's coming after you. I think it's probably worse. But thanks so much. We'll come back and we'll see you on the Borg podcast sometime soon. Enjoyed it. Appreciate it. Thanks. All right. We'll be back tomorrow with we'll see you on the Borg podcast sometime soon. Enjoyed it. Appreciate it.

Thanks. All right. We'll be back tomorrow with a Friday weekend edition of the Borg podcast. See you all then. Peace. you storm me today All of a sudden that old rain is falling down And my world

is cloudy and gray You've gone away Oh storm me You've gone away Oh, stormy Oh, stormy Bring back that sunny day Yesterday's love was like a warm summer breeze But like the weather, it changed

Now things are dreary, baby, and it's windy and cold. And I spend alone in the rain. Calling your name. Oh, stormy. Oh, stormy. The Bullard Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Breth.