The Bulwark Podcast - Susan Rice and Mondaire Jones: The Dictator Hugger

Episode Date: October 16, 2024

Amb. Rice says Trump is a "surrender monkey" who is all about building up Russia and China for his own benefit—and to the detriment of our national security. Meanwhile, his domestic policy is a platform of civil war on his fellow Americans. Plus, Mondaire Jones on one of the most important House races in the country. Amb. Susan Rice and Rep. Mondaire Jones join Tim Miller.

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If it isn't and your landlord isn't responding to maintenance 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, Rent Safe TO can help. Learn more at toronto.ca slash rentsafeTO. Hey guys, it's Wednesday. So I'm also over on the Next Level Feed with JVL and Sarah. We taped it on Tuesday night and I was having a glass of wine because I don't know, I'm getting a little stressed about the polls.

Be warned, it's a wine-filled episode of The Next Level. We also are live in Philly tomorrow on Thursday. We've got Charlie Dent with Sarah Matthews, George Conway, a bunch of the Bullwer gang. I think we're going to be streaming it live on YouTube. Go and check out our YouTube feed and press the little alarm bell button. So if we go live, you will get to join in the revelry, join in the rallying cry with us in the final weeks before the election. We also have a new Bulwark podcast from John Avalon where he's talking about solutions

to issues. I think it's a nice compliment to our suite of podcasts. Obviously, we talk about issues and solutions as they come a nice compliment to our suite of podcasts. Obviously, we talk about issues and solutions as they come up, but to have something that's totally dedicated to it. This week, he's talking about phone usage among children and how we can kind of maybe roll back the phone-based childhood a little bit. So we're very excited to have this new offering. The podcast is called How to Fix It. You can go to thebullwork.com

to find it or search your podcast app of choice. All right. Up next, super excited for this podcast. We've got a double header, Ambassador Susan Rice in segment one. We're talking about foreign policy and then Mondaire Jones and one of maybe, if not the most important house race in the country. We talk about why the house races are so important this year. All right. Up next, Susan Rice. Hello and welcome to the Bollard podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller.

We've got a double header for you today in segment two, Democratic congressional candidate, Mondaire Jones. But first, she served as national security advisor and ambassador to the United Nations during the Obama administration. She was also Biden's chief domestic policy advisor for the first two-ish years of the administration. It is Susan Rice. Well, none of my candidates won, so I'm bad with formal titles. Are we ambassador? Are we Susan? Are we advisor? What are we going by these days? Well, if you're talking about titles, we're ambassador, but if we're having a conversation,

you're Tim and I'm Susan. Okay, great. How's it going, Susan? And we'll do a little bit on some of your formal titles. And I know that you pivoted to the domestic stuff, to stateside, but if you don't mind, if we could try to focus a little bit on foreign policy for this little convo today, because I think there's a lot of interest in both candidates on foreign policy, plenty to discuss in the foreign policy side of things. So I wanted to start with Donald Trump, if we could.

We had a lot of news from Bob Woodward in the last week about Trump's relationship with Putin. So I'm just curious at the most open ended level, what concerns you the most about the Trump-Russia relationship? Well, Tim, a lot concerns me about the Trump-Russia relationship. And I think it's important to be focused on the threat that Donald Trump poses to our national security internationally. But to be very honest, as we speak right now, I'm most concerned about the threat

that Donald Trump poses to us domestically, and that is truly a national security threat. When you hear Donald Trump talking not only about terminating the Constitution and being a dictator on day one, but now most recently, focusing on the so-called enemy within, claiming that the biggest threat to the United States is not China, it's not Russia, but it's the so-called enemy within, meaning anybody and everybody in this country who disagrees with him or opposes his policies or votes against him, or more recently he's just blanket labeled to all Democrats the enemy from within and pledged to use the military against them as necessary. Now that's insanity and that is an extreme threat to our national security. It really is, Tim,

national security, it really is, Tim, Donald Trump running on a platform of civil war. By the time you turn the military domestically on your opponents or anybody who disagrees with you, that's what you end up with. So that's what's worrying me most right now. You're closer to this, having been in that world of international security advisor. What is the sense from inside military world know, kind of military world inside the national security world about this sort of, these sort of policy proposals, if you want to call them a policy proposal, these sort of assertions from Trump, right?

I mean, like for some people on the outside, there's a sense of, oh, this is just bluster. I mean, but this becomes real business if you have to like prepare for what would happen if he gets in there and he makes a, and he tries to command the military to do something like this? What kind of preparations and conversations are happening in that world?

Well, first of all, it's not bluster. Let's remember what he did when he was president, not just sickening a violent armed mob on the US Capitol to kill Nancy Pelosi and hang Mike Pence and resulting in the deaths of a number of law enforcement officers. He actually had plans for and wanted to use the military against peaceful protesters in the United States. That was, remember, the whole thing that had General Milley so deeply concerned both in

June of 2020 and then again during the transition that Donald Trump was going to invoke the Insurrection Act and call the military out against civilians. So this is not a fantasy. If he were to be elected in 2024, he will no longer have around him, Tim, the kinds of people that would refuse to comply with that kind of illegal and unlawful order. He is somebody who has unprecedented in history, his vice president, two of his defense secretaries, his secretary of state, two of his national security advisors, his former chief of staff, a four-star military officer, all say he's unfit to be commander in chief.

He's dangerous and shouldn't come back. We've heard General Milley just in the last several days say exactly what I just said, that Donald Trump is truly the greatest threat to the United States right now because of all of his plans and his readiness to use the force of the military and the force of the presidency against the American people. And what's different this time now, Tim, which is really truly frightening, in addition to the fact that he will not have around him people with any sense of restraint and decency, it's that the Supreme Court has said that the President of the United States acting

in his official capacity is immune from prosecution. So there are literally no guardrails. So to me, this is extremely concerning. And it will require people up and down the military chain of command to refuse what they consider to be an unlawful order. And I don't know that once he's fired all the senior leadership as he's vowed to do and court-martialed them, that those that are responsible senior military officials who uphold their vow to the Constitution, I don't know where that leads.

I think it's a very scary prospect. Yeah, I totally agree with you on the political appointments that we talk about a lot, but that really is where the rubber meets the road on the career military officials in the chain of command. I mean, I know that there were these sort of conversations happening among the former secretaries of defense during that period between the election and January 6th. And it's, you know, I mean, it's wild that we're in a situation right now. It's very scary that we're in a situation right now that like, kind of those conversations have to be happening again, right?

I mean, obviously, that was a political objective of beating Donald Trump, right? But we are really on the cusp of a major crisis within the chain of command and the career military officials. Tim, the only sure way to avoid this kind of scenario is to defeat Donald Trump at the ballot box and hopefully to do so resoundingly. There's no other certain path. All right, back to Russia. You know, we're having these conversations. I saw you tweeted this week that Trump's conversations with Putin would be a violation of the Logan Act. And I have a word

on tomorrow, so I'm excited to ask him about this too. But like, are we sure he's not lying about this? Like, is this really how, like, what is our sense for what is really happening in that relationship? I don't know who's lying or what, but I do not find it in the least bit surprising when Bob Woodward reports that Donald Trump has talked to Vladimir Putin some seven times since he left office. Part of the reason why I don't find it surprising is because I know when I was national security advisor in 2016 during the transition, Donald Trump was having conversations with foreign heads of state that were undisclosed to the sitting administration and that were involving

policies and actions that ran directly counter to the policies of the administration. We have one president at a time and one government at a time. Donald Trump's never respected that. So I would not be at all surprised. And I find it completely credible that he would be having those conversations with Putin. And I gathered just in the last couple of days when pressed about that, he neither confirmed nor denied those conversations and in fact said, it would be a good thing if I were talking to Putin.

Now, the bigger question that you're getting at is what is this about? Why are they talking? And I think that's exactly the right question. You don't call somebody seven times to wish them happy birthday or happy new year. We know that there is a history of Donald Trump seeking Vladimir Putin's assistance to interfere in our electoral process. He did it openly and publicly in 2016. Were those calls to try to gain Putin's assistance again to interfere in our elections were those phone

calls about Ukraine and offering Putin some promises or assurances about how Donald Trump will force Ukraine to surrender and capitulate and cut off military aid if he's able to win. You got to ask yourself what the hell were they talking about? And there's no scenario that I can think of that is consistent with the U S national interest. And that isn't quite frightening. The only scenarios are, you know, Trump's interests and Putin's interests. Right.

And, and clearly at some level giving him cover for extending the war for like giving him optionality, thinking about why make any moves now if you're Putin, thinking that maybe you'll get Trump in there next time. And you're having, apparently, some sort of back channel conversation. So I think that it's having real world impact on the security of Ukraine right now. Absolutely. There's no question that Putin is playing for time and his whole strategy is to

wait out the election, hope that Donald Trump wins, and then hope that Trump does what he's pledged to do, which is to end the war very quickly by basically cutting the cord with Ukraine and selling them out and being the nevel chamberlain of the Republican Party, a surrender monkey. That's exactly his plan. It's wild that we've got here. I'm here with Obama's national security advisor calling the Republican nominee a surrender monkey. That's been a strange decade, Ambassador Rice.

I have to ask you though, since I've never been in these rooms, do you have, I noticed Avril Haynes gave a very cryptic, classic national security style non-answer to the question about whether we know whether Trump and Putin are talking. Would we know? Like, would they know? Do you think that they would know? I guess this is my question. I'm not going to go there, Tim.

You don't know whether they would know. I love this. I'm going to ask you to ask the next question. All right. I want to go to what Trump did, what Trump did, Trump's interview yesterday, John Mikkelwhite at the Economic Club of Chicago, editor of Bloomberg. They talked a little bit about a wide range of things, though Trump, like, kind of unable to follow most of the questions. And I want to play one specific exchange about how the Trump tariffs might impact the relationship with allies.

At the last Cold War against the Soviet Union, America won it in part because it rallied allies to it. You're talking about slamming allies with 30%, 20% tariffs. Isn't this time you're going to end up trying to rally the West and you're dividing it instead? Isn't that the real problem with tariffs, even beyond all the problems due to the economy, where you keep on bringing up these individual examples, but the overall effect is going to be dramatic? No, the overall effect will be...

But answer first about foreign policy. Yeah, I'll do that. How does it help you take on China turning all your allies against you? It helps tremendously, because China thinks we're a stupid country, a very stupid country. They can't believe that somebody finally got wise to them. Not one president, Bush, Obama, Barack Hussein Obama, have you heard of him? Not one president, not think of it, not one president charged China anything. They said, oh, they are a third world nation.

They are developing. Well, we're a developing nation to take a look at Detroit. Take a look at our cities. We're a developing nation. We, we have to develop more than they do. They were way behind them. You take a look at what's happened to our cities. So what I'm saying is this question was about your allies, not about China.

So there is not understanding how tariffs work. There's attacking America and American cities, not understanding the question about what the impact would be on the allies. Where do you want to take that? A lot of places to go. I don't know that it's that he doesn't understand. I think he doesn't care. And I think he thinks the American people are stupid and that he can keep saying tariffs, tariffs, tariffs and tariffs are penalized foreign countries and make people believe that that's the case when in fact, as you know and I know and most people know, tariffs are a tax on the American consumer. It is not the foreign country that pays the price of tariffs. The way it works is a company-

China doesn't just write a check to the treasury? That's not how that works? That's not how it works. Oh, okay. A company exports something from Germany and sells it in the United States, an American company. If there is a tariff, it is the company that pays the tariff when the product comes into the United States, an American company. If there is a tariff, it is the company that pays the tariff when the product comes into the United States. And the company passes that cost on to the consumer.

Germany's not paying or China's not paying. It's the American consumer who is paying. So that's the first problem with his logic. But the question was a very good one. How do you lead in the world with friends and allies when you are punishing your friends and allies across the board just as you would your adversaries on the same basis with a 20% across the board tariff on every good coming in from every country? That's insanity. It's economic insanity, but it's national security insanity because why would Germany, our ally or the UK or Canada or any other friendly country want to join with us when

our national security is on the line, whether in the Middle East or Ukraine or vis-a-vis China or vis-a-vis Russia, when we are actively penalizing and undermining their economies and treating them like adversaries. They won't. It's crazy. And Tim, the problem is Trump tried to do this in his first term. He imposed steel tariffs on Canada under the guise that the steel industry in Canada was a threat to the United States national security.

He invoked a national security authority to impose tariffs on Canadian steel. I can't tell you to this day how pissed off the Canadians are that US policy would paint Canada as a threat to the United States. Canada who stood by us in every war that we've fought in over generations and the longest peaceful border in the world and the closest trading relationship. That's how Donald Trump treats our closest friends. This is a real concern. These tariffs are an economic disaster and a national security calamity. And he clearly either doesn't care, doesn't get it, but I think he gets it. And this is consistent with

his policy of building up and benefiting Russia and China for his own personal gain, as well as because he has this fascination with dictators to the detriment of the United States national security and to the detriment of our alliances. You speak to a lot of our allies and ambassadors, people that you've dealt with in bilateral relationships over the years. Right now, those were a couple of weeks out, what do they fear most about another Trump term? They fear exactly what we've been talking about. The erraticism, the recklessness, the absolute disregard for our alliances.

You know, when Donald Trump says that he could give a damn about NATO, that NATO is a protection racket and if they don't pay, which is full of all kinds of fallacies, then they, you know, no protection. NATO is not a country club you pay dues to, actually. It's a strange, it's an interesting concept. Vladimir Putin can do what the hell he wants with NATO. I mean, that's what our friends and allies fear, that Donald Trump actually, you know, means it. Because look, his former national security advisor, John Bolton, is very clear in his estimation that Trump intends to withdraw from NATO.

Trump has been very clear his disdain for NATO, he's called it obsolete, among other things, and that's one of the nicer terms he's used. This is again about doing Putin's bidding. There's nothing Vladimir Putin wants more than to dismantle NATO and to see it, you know, devolve in atrophy and then be able to continue to press his military campaign further and further to the West. You know, we started in Georgia in 2008, then in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine in 2014, then his attempt in 2022 to take over all of Ukraine.

You know, if he were to succeed in Ukraine, if Donald Trump hands him surrender on a silver platter, then why do we think he's going to stop now? It's Poland, it's the Baltics, it's Katie bar the door. And then we, the United States, either have to abandon our NATO allies or send US troops into battle. It's insanity. I want to turn over to the vice president's kind of proactive foreign policy, but I think that there's a lot of misunderstanding of it out there,

in part because of misinformation, in part just because it's been such a short campaign run and people are just getting introduced to her. My guest on the podcast yesterday, one of them, said that he thinks that she's a neocon. I'm like, if only, but he didn't like that. Some of my neocon friends think that she's basically like a campus protester that wants to withdraw us from the world. And so, how would you describe her, her, her foreign policy? I'd describe it as strong, pragmatic and, and principle.

She's in the very much in the mainstream of national security policymaking. There was a time, Tim, and you remember, and so do I, when foreign policy and national security between Democrats and Republicans was played within the 40 yard lines, as I like to say. You could have shade here, difference there, but basically played within the 40 yard lines. I think that's where she is, quite frankly. She said very clearly that she thinks the United States needs to maintain the strongest fighting force the world has ever seen, that we have to strengthen and invest in and nurture our alliances and partnerships, that we are stronger when we stand for our values of freedom

and democracy. But she is going to be very judicious about the use of force. She is not an Econ. She is not a campus protester. She's squirreling in those 40 yard lines. I'm very sure about both those things. But, but you know, uh, she will be smart and thoughtful and deliberate. She's got a lot of national security experience already. As vice president, she's been to more than 20 countries.

She's met with more than 150 world leaders, including adversaries like Xi Jinping. She's been to Asia four times, Europe multiple times. She's been a major player in sensitive negotiations about returning Americans who are detained unlawfully. She's been a central player in our efforts to bolster Ukraine and to deal with a very complex situation in the Middle East. But she also understands that American strength is dependent on our strength at home and that we need to invest at home in our manufacturing capacity and education, in healthcare, in our supply chains to secure them against

potential disruption, whether because of something like COVID or because of something nefarious like Chinese action. So she understands that our national security has to have very strong domestic underpinnings, our economy has to be strong, our people have to be well, but she also understands that we can't go it alone in the world. You know, we can't afford an America first approach, which really means America alone. It doesn't mean we put our national interests first. Obviously, we put our national interests first. That's what any responsible commander in chief does. Trump puts his personal interests first.

But we cannot go it alone in this dangerous and complex world where China and Russia and North Korea and Iran are increasingly concerning their efforts. We need our friends and partners in Europe, in Asia, in Africa, and in Latin America to be with us. We talked about how dangerous the Trump sycophants will be around him on the national security side. No Mattis coming in for term two. They're not even sporting him this time. What about the Harris team?

There's some scuttle that Phil Gordon is our advisor, is maybe a little bit more hawkish on Ukraine. Any general thoughts on the type of team that will be around her and what impact it might have on policy? Well, the good news, Tim, is that the Democrats have a deep and experienced bench on foreign policy and national security. I know Phil Gordon well, who is Vice President Harris's national security advisor. I've worked with him in the Clinton administration, in the Obama administration, and in the Biden administration. He's a smart, experienced, thoughtful guy. I don't know what exact role he'll play.

I'm sure he'll be involved, but so will many others. I mean, there is no shortage of good people who are currently serving and good people who previously served and may come back that she can call up. So I am confident that she will have a strong experienced team of national security professionals around her. Real quick, there's just some news on Israel this week. The vice president put out a tweet saying that the UN is reporting no food has entered northern Gaza in nearly two weeks. Israel must urgently do more to facilitate the flow of aid to those in need. Civilians must be protected.

International humanitarian law must be respected. She also has questioned this a bunch on 60 Minutes. I think a very nuanced answer about our alliance with the Israeli people and how that at times, that doesn't necessarily mean full support of the Netanyahu administration, but it does mean full support of the Israeli people. How do you feel like she's handled that balance and kind of the latest news about the humanitarian issues in Gaza? Well, I think she's handled it very well. It's a very complex situation.

Obviously, we have a strong commitment to Israel's security and particularly its defense against adversaries like Iran and Iran's proxies. And yet at the same time, one can understand the extreme toll that the war in Gaza has taken on innocent civilians, both through military action and through lack of humanitarian access. And you can be very clear, as the Vice President has been and as President Biden has been, that it is past time for a ceasefire in Gaza that enables the hostages to come home.

I mean, Tim, it's mind boggling when you think that hostages have been held there for over a year. In tunnels, in darkness, in deprivation. It's just extraordinary. The fact that this is not the central focus right now is hard to understand. Then, of course, the extraordinary suffering of the people of Gaza. It is not a strategically sound approach to pummel Gaza into the ground and expect that there will not be generations of resentment and desire for revenge that emerges. Vice President Harris is absolutely right.

We need a ceasefire. We need the hostages home. We need humanitarian access and support for the people of Gaza. And we need a horizon for the Palestinians and their aspirations for security, sovereignty, and self-determination, a two-state solution as we stand by Israel and its absolutely justified need to defend itself against its many adversaries in the region. Are you surprised by her answer to 60 Minutes about Iran being potentially the biggest foe in the world right now?

Um, look, we've got a, we've got a, unfortunately a number of foes. We got no shortage of foes. We had no shortage of foes and we haven't for a long time. You know, so Iran is definitely up there. China, Russia, and North Korea, and the combination, their coordination is what concerns me most. But honestly, Tim, I'm not trying to be cute here. All of those threats are exceedingly real. But right now, today, literally, I'm worried more about our domestic cohesion when we have a president who's campaigning

on a platform of civil war. And Tim, what this is about, by the way, is telling us what he intends to do if he is elected, but also laying a foundation if he's not elected for violence and outrage among his supporters. So this is really, really dangerous. Amen. All right. You're on the Never Trumper pod. So we are aligned on this. We are fully aligned. But I've got to do one follow up on the foes because, you know, I mean, this is my chance. Sure.

Looking back to the Obama era, like we did, we had reset with Russia. We, you know, obviously the relationship with Iran different at that time, a more realistic view of working with Xi. I talked to David Sanger about this in a pod a couple months ago. Do you feel like there's a reassessment of that, some of the kind of views of that nexus of China and Russia and Iran from what you guys saw during the Obama time? I don't know if it's a reassessment. I think that the situation has evolved. When I was serving at the United Nations in President Obama's first term and then as national security

advisor in his second term, we saw diplomatic collaboration and coordination between Russia and China. If we were negotiating something complicated in the UN, for example, they would often align their approaches and vote together But not always and there were issues like Syria and Ukraine and others where their approaches diverged Now what we are seeing is Something that looks a lot more like a traditional alliance that is military. It is economic and diplomatic it is economic and diplomatic. It is really a full-fledged partnership where China is providing critical economic support as well as dual-use items that Putin is using in Ukraine.

There are reports today, I don't know if they're accurate, about North Korean military personnel on the ground in Ukraine on the Russian side. We've seen a big shift. Ten years ago, the Russians and the Chinese were working with the United States and the Europeans to negotiate a nuclear deal with Iran, to isolate North Korea with sanctions and other forms of pressure. That has shifted.

And so obviously our approach has to shift as well. The world doesn't stand still and in Putin and in Xi Jinping in particular, Xi was early in his tenure during the Obama years. He's become much more confident, much more assertive and frankly more dangerous. All right. Final question to the Nikki Haley voters out there. much more confident, much more assertive, and frankly, more dangerous. Yeah. All right. Final question to the Nikki Haley voters out there. All right.

The national security Republicans are still on the fence. What's the strongest pitch you can make for them to supporting Kamala Harris? The strongest pitch is that Kamala Harris understands and respects American strength and values our military and our veterans. She doesn't denigrate them as suckers and losers. She's not going to court-martial former officers who have had the audacity to speak their minds as private citizens. She will be a thoughtful, careful, steady, smart commander- chief who will lead the United States in a dangerous world

in partnership with our allies through strength. And Donald Trump is reckless, dangerous, self-interested, dictator hugging, and will put the United States national interest at the bottom of his priorities when it suits him personally, which is all the time. Ambassador Susan Rice, fellow critic of Surrender Monkey Donald Trump. You're welcome out the Bullwork Podcast. If you have time, come see me in New Orleans. Thanks so much for doing this.

Up next, Mondaire Jones. Thank you, Tim. All right, and we're back with a Democratic candidate for New York's 17th congressional district. He's a previous congressman from the New York City area, but gave up the district after a redistricting shuffle in 2022. So now he's back in the mix running against first term Republican representative Mike Lawler. It's Mondaire Jones.

What's up, Mondaire? It's good to be here with you and always good to be running to represent the district that I always intended to continue representing prior to New York's disastrous redistricting in 2022. A horrific redistricting thing. I mean, we don't need to go down into the muck and all this, but it really is one of those things. I mean, the Republicans are carving up Tennessee like it's a pizza to make sure Nashville doesn't

have any representatives. And meanwhile, in New York, Democrats are doing own goals on the redistricting system, kind of a ridiculous process, but that's for a nerd podcast. That's for another day. Let's go forward. We're not going back, Mondare. We're just going forward. We're not going back.

Though I did, I thought this was a nerd podcast. It is, it is. That's super nerd though. If we're getting into kind of congressional redistricting shapes, I mean, that's like deep nerd stuff. This is like it is. That's super nerd though. If we're getting into congressional redistricting shapes, I mean, that's deep nerd stuff. This is light nerd. This is soft nerd. So you're running against Mike Lawler. I want to talk about Mike first and not his obsession with Michael Jackson. We're going to close with that. But I want to talk about his politics first. He's the stand in for the moderate Republican. like use him as an example and you're running against him

I just I don't know that the reputation matches the reality of what he's been doing in there And so I was wondering if you could kind of share You know why you're running against him and how you assess your opponent Mike Lawler is a con artist. He masquerades as a moderate on television But he votes just like the extreme MAGA Republicans. As recently as a few weeks ago, Donald Trump was on camera praising Mike. He said that he used to not like him, it seemed, but now he loves him. He doesn't know what happened.

Well, I can tell you what happened. It's that he got cocky. I mean, Mike Lawler has been supporting Donald Trump, of course, since 2016. He's supporting him for the third consecutive presidential election. And eventually your past catches up to you. So between his voting record to restrict access to abortion, to oppose protecting social security and Medicare, and to open that baseless impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, and now having to be accountable for the fact that he's

supporting a guy who tried to overturn the last presidential election and who is now a convicted felon, despite Lawler pretending to be the law and order candidate in this race is something that has caused a lot of people in recent weeks to say, this guy is not who I thought he was. Yeah. It shows you the low bar these days for Republicans. This guy is not who I thought he was. Yeah. It shows you the low bar these days for Republicans.

It's like, this guy was for the completely absurd clown show, Joe Biden impeachment, and is for Donald Trump post January 6th and still kind of gets this sheen of, as long as he isn't Marjorie Taylor Greene, you know, that must mean he's mainstream and it's just like not, not a match with what has happened in reality. The bar is in hell. I mean, you simply have to say that the 2020 election was won by Joe Biden and people in the press will ascribe the word moderate to you without you having to do any work without you having to prove it.

There are so many bipartisan things, so many moderate things that Lollard could be doing right now, such as supporting that tough bipartisan border security bill pending in Congress, which is something he claims the border crisis is something he wants to solve. But again, he's taking his direction from Donald Trump like the rest of them. I want to talk about just the importance of the House because it does get lost a little bit in this presidential year. I know everybody doesn't need these nightmares going forward, but there's a chance Donald Trump could win this election.

It's a very close election. The house basically went Republican on the back of seats in blue states like New York, like California. A handful of seats, including the one you're running for right now, went to the Republicans. And I think that part of it was because in those blue states, there was a little bit of a sense of comfort that it's still a democratic state. We don't have to worry about losing abortion access here. We don't have to worry about some of the crazy anti-democracy stuff here. And so it gave people a little bit more room to do crossover ballots.

That is not really the case this time. I just, I don't know if that's clear for people, right? Like there's a possibility that Donald Trump could have complete control of Congress. And if that is true, it's like a massive difference whether Mondaire Jones is in, is in the house versus Mike Lawler. So I know you don't want to imagine a Donald Trump presidency but I just think it's important to explain the stakes to people about how different things could

look. In fact imagining a Donald Trump presidency is one of the things that that keeps me in this fight. It is just the fact that Donald Trump is doing better this time around at this stage of the race than he was doing in the 2020 and in the 2016 presidential campaigns. So there is a very good chance that Donald Trump wins this race, as confident as I am and as optimistic as I am about Kamala Harris. And so what can we do here in the state of New York to make sure that we don't have Donald Trump's dangerous project 2025 agenda next January?

And that is of course flipping this seat right here in the lower Hudson Valley. And there are other seats in New York that collectively would decide control of Congress and make Hakeem Jeffrey speaker of the house, God willing. We are staring at the very real possibility of Congress and make Hakeem Jeffery speaker of the house, God willing, we are staring at the very real possibility of a national abortion ban, cuts to social security and Medicare, continued obstruction of the efforts to secure our

southern border, which is something that matters a lot to people in my district, believe it or not, and also, keep the Affordable Care Act intact so that insurance companies can't go back to denying coverage to people with preexisting conditions like cancer and diabetes and asthma. All of these things and so much else are at stake. And the question is whether we will do what we can in these house races, including my own house race,

to get the job done and be a bulwark, shall we say? Yeah. All right. All right. We'll allow it. We'll allow it one time. Just once. One free pass on the bulwark time.

Look, this is, this is a district that Biden won by 10 points. There are 80,000 more registered Democrats than Republicans in this district. And we are in a dead heat as of the latest public polling. I'm really excited about the progress that we've made in this race, about the incredible field program that we have, and the grassroots fundraise. But Elon Musk is spending the most in this House race that he is spending in any House race in America, and he's doing that to defeat me, obviously. It's also in addition to a lot of other Republican super PAC spending.

So we're just, uh, we're fighting dragons here, but, but we're getting closer and closer to winning this race by the day. And it's really exciting to see play out. Yeah. They're fighting them because they know the other side of what I'm talking about. And like how important, you know, if they, if you want to have, see Donald Trump doesn't really care that much, right? He just wants to be president and stay out of jail, right?

But the rest of these guys that are putting this agenda in place, the Project 2025 agenda, as you mentioned, whatever grift Elon wants out of the government, Mike Johnson, having Mike Johnson in control of the agenda next year, honestly probably scare like New Yorkers in your district more than Donald Trump, right? Like there's some people like look at Trump and see him as a New Yorker and see him as like a mod. He doesn't really believe all this crazy, you know, social conservative stuff. Like Mike Johnson does.

And if he's in charge of the agenda and the Republicans have the Senate, you're going to get a Mike Johnson agenda in New York. I mean, we need a Democrat of Congress just to certify the election results. Look at the interview that Mike Johnson, who I knew better than the rest of the world because I served with him on the Judiciary Committee. Look at the interview we gave a few days ago. Did you guys have a little covenant eyes deal? Or like you're monitoring each other's phone usage or not that close?

Listen, that stuff that he does is very weird. I'll leave it at that. But in terms of him not even committing to certify a free and fair election, if the winner is Kamala Harris, and knowing his past as the chief legal architect in the Congress of the 2020 effort to overturn the presidential election,

you have to take very seriously the fact that we can't trust these guys to do the bare minimum. And so that's why among other reasons, we need a democratic Congress for January. You were campaigning with Haitian community in your district I saw earlier this week. Just talk about that. Like what were you hearing when you're out there with Haitian immigrants, Haitian community in your district I saw earlier this week. Just talk about that.

What were you hearing when you're out there with Haitian immigrants, Haitian residents here in America and what has there been any downstream impact on them from the BS that Trump and Vance were pushing? I was born and raised in this district. I spent most of my life in Rockland County, where in the village of Spring Valley, we have the largest Haitian American community in the country per capita. The second largest Haitian American community in the country per capita. And more than Little Haiti down to Miami, you got to Little Haiti.

You got to add the per capita to it, man. Okay. Per capita. So, uh, when I was at this rally on Sunday with a lot of folks who frankly helped raise me growing up, what I heard and what I saw was a lot of pain and outreach towards Donald Trump and JD Vance, but also a member of Congress named Mike Lawler who refuses to call those two men out by name, this despicable lie that Donald Trump and JD Vance have been repeating, they haven't stopped telling you.

Something that has been debunked, something that JD Vance was forced to admit was a lie on CNN when he did an interview with Dana Bash, has caused not only dozens of bomb threats in Springfield, Ohio, but has really put a target on the backs of Haitian Americans throughout this country. And the bare minimum that leadership requires is condemnation of the people who are spreading that despicable, hurtful lie about Haitian people eating cats and dogs. And there was a warm reception, obviously, for me and the prospect of representation, like what I had been providing.

And I was proud to represent this community. We have a diverse district here in the lower Hudson Valley. And I have been proud to stand with a number of different constituencies over not just the course of this campaign, but my time in Congress last term. We don't have a member of Congress who's been doing any of that. I mean, he's only standing up for communities optically to the extent that he views it to be an opportunity to hit at the far left,

but he'll never stand up to Donald Trump or any other extremist in his party. No doubt about that. All right. I want to read you a little bit from Nate Cohn in the New York Times. Everybody, nobody get triggered by the needle, but say what you want about what the polling has been out there. I think Nate does a good job of analyzing the data that we got. Here's what he said earlier this week. Uh-oh. Uh-oh.

Ms. Harris is no doubt on track to win an overwhelming majority of black voters, but Mr. Trump appears to be chipping away broadly at a longstanding democratic advantage. Much of the erosion and support for Harris is driven by a growing belief that Democrats who have long celebrated black voters as the backbone of their party have failed to deliver on the promises the poll showed. 40% of black voters under 30 said that the Republican party was more likely to follow through on its campaign commitments and the Democrats were woof. What can be done about communicating about communicating to younger, younger

black voters that may not have the full picture? I don't know. I'd be one way to put it. How do you, or how do you assess all that? Or are you not seeing that? Let me just say that there are challenges. I don't think to the extent that, that pundits have been making them out to be. But you know, a big part of this is explaining what those campaign promises are.

I mean, Donald Trump is completely adverse to the black community. Not just because he's virulently, explicitly racist, but because he opposes things that would actually improve the lives of black people. This is a guy who wants to drive up the cost of prescription drugs, throw people out their health insurance plans. He has no appetite whatsoever for the idea that there is unfairness within our criminal legal system, despite himself being a convicted felon

and an adjudicated rapist. He is so at odds with the best interests of the black community. It is important to highlight those myriad ways in which he and the Republican Party are, but also to talk about the accomplishments and the progress that has been made. You know, I was part of a Congress that created millions of good paying jobs and will continue to do so over the next decade. Many of those jobs, union jobs. I was part of a Congress that, yes, sent out stimulus checks, but that cut child poverty in half. Who do you think poverty disproportionately afflicts in this

country, in our broken economy? I was part of a congress that passed the George Floyd Justice and Policing Act through the House, and then when it got to the Senate, it failed because of unanimous Republican obstruction. So, to be sure, the Democratic Party is imperfect. And we've got people in our party, in elected office, and other leadership roles who have not always done right by the Black community. I know that well. I'm obviously Black. My whole family's Black. But there is only one major political party in this country serious about racial progress. And in this most important election of our lifetimes, where you've got a candidate in Kamala Harris who has the lived experience of black Americans and who frankly is the

most forward thinking on racial progress of any person to any major political party's nominee for president, I think in the history of this country, I think there's a real opportunity to advance the ball. And we just have to communicate this in conversations, in barbershops, on the airwaves, with our family members, on social media. And I'm seeing a lot of that happening, so that's encouraging. So you think that, do you think that's the issue of communication? The issue of social media, it's bifurcation, people are getting bad information or is there

something else? Terrible information. With the generational side of things. There's been just frankly a coordinated effort to misinform and to disinform people, whether that's on social media or on Fox News or on the New York Post. It is just critically important that we push back on that. I hear it all on that. I hear all the time. I get my haircut every week. So I'm hearing it all the time in black barbershops.

Pete I'm getting my haircut in a few hours. The conversations that I'm hearing are a little different at the gay parlor here in town. Okay, last thing I have to ask you about this. I've been thinking about it ever since I read it. I can't keep it out of my mind. This is also the New York Times. In 2005, as a high school senior, Mr. Lawler, your opponent, flew from New York to California. I want to sit on that for a second. He was a high school senior. He flew from New York to California to attend parts of Michael Jackson's criminal trial. The pop star had been charged with molesting a 13 year old boy at his Neverland ranch. Lawler went there as a Jackson super fan to harass and harangue

the people testifying against Jackson in his molestation case. That's the weirdest shit I've, I think I've ever read about a candidate. And I'm like, I don't know, kind of just like it was dumped into paragraph 19 of a story about how he also did blackface one time. I'm like, like, I want to learn more about this. When I was a teenager flying across the country to harass Michael Jackson's accusers. So anyway, do you have anything for me on that topic? Have you ever flown across the country to stalk a celebrity?

There are no, there are so many people in the district who've actually reached out to me about that anecdote. Good. Which was reported last summer actually in the summer of 2023. But when the New York Times writes about it, obviously a larger audience reads it to say that they are actually more concerned by that behavior than the blackface that he did the following year in 2006 at a time in American history when it was well established that blackface was deeply offensive so there would be no excuse for it. Look this is all very

weird and and disconcerting but it speaks to an extremism. It speaks to an extremism that persists. You know it I think, at times concealed because he's never asked any tough questions. I think the reporting on Mike Lawler has not been robust when it comes to his past. I mean, all you have to do is go to his Twitter history and you see all kinds of crazy, MAGA extremist things from the period before he was ever elected to office and was serving for example as the executive director of the New York State GOP and a career lobbyist my opponent is Emblematic I think of the MAGA movement where cruelty is the point where people are

motivated by fear and anger rather than love and optimism about the future of this country. And it comes across in his policies. I think that's a very calm and judicious way to respond to that story. So thank you, Mondaire Jones. Hopefully, at the end of your campaign, Mike Lawler will beat it, so to speak. And we will be back here tomorrow with another edition of the bullet product. Guys, go ahead, hold on. What's your website?

People want to go and check out more. I appreciate it. Mondaire for congress.com. Please click on that donate button. Also, please click on get involved so you can volunteer. We are so close to winning this race. Everyone knows that it's why Republicans are spending a fortune to defeat me here. All right. We'll see everybody tomorrow with Bob Woodward. Peace. That living in the country and you living in a town Tell you yellow man make you dance on the ground

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Some jive BMW under a card When me come back they say me favor boy John See me here See me here Tell me who me favor See me here See me here Tell me who me favor Cause The Bulldog Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.