The Bulwark Podcast - Tom Malinowski: Fight the Power, Dems

Episode Date: February 11, 2025

The Democratic Party was made for different times, when rules were followed. But to preserve the basic power of Congress, and to prove that the Constitution is worth the paper it's printed on, the troublemakers in the Dem caucus have to get busy fighting over tariffs and a looming budget deal. Besides, Trump's strongest hand is performative outbursts—making threats and pretending he got something in return. Plus, Elon is giving away America's greatness, the EU should call Trump's bluff, and the Democrats should quit chasing donations from the social media companies that broke our democracy. Former congressman Tom Malinowski joins Tim Miller. show notes: Tom's Bulwark piece on how the Democrats should fight

Hello and welcome to the Bullard podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller, delighted to be here today with Tom Malinowski, representative of Jersey's seventh congressional district from 2019 to 2023. He was assistant secretary of state during the Obama administration, concentrating on democracy and human rights. And he wrote for us last week, five things Dems must do to fight Trump now want to talk about all of it. So welcome to the pod.

How you doing, Congressman? I'm great. Everything's so wonderful. Is that right? What do you go by as a former Congressman? You just want to be Tom? Do you want to be sir? Do you want to do sir?

Uh, your excellency. Your excellency. Just Tom's fine. Yeah. We'll, we'll try out a couple of different out a couple different ones and see how it goes. I don't know that we're going to be doing democracy and human rights anymore at the State Department, so we're going to get to that and we're going to get to your recommendations. But Donald Trump did an interview last night on Fox.

There was a lot of typical nonsense about election fraud and Greenland and whatever, but there was a substantive policy exchange that I wanted to get your take on. Here's Trump talking about his plans for what's happening in Ukraine. I want to have our money secured because we're spending hundreds of billions of dollars. And, you know, they may make a deal,

they may not make a deal, they may be Russian some day or they may not be Russian some day, but we're going to have all this money in there. And I say, I want it back. They may not make a deal. They may be Russian someday, or they may not be Russian someday, but we're gonna have all this money in there. And I say, I want it back. And I told them that I want the equivalent, like $500 billion worth of rare earth. And they've essentially agreed to do that.

They might be Russian someday. It's an interesting thing to say about an ally. What'd you think about that? Yeah, I don't know where to start. There's so much shitty stuff going on right now. I actually think I'm less depressed about Ukraine than I am about a lot of other things. OK.

Because. Do we have to rank? Yeah, well, it's a low bar. I mean, what he just said was insane on about five different levels, but we can work with it. Zelensky and the Ukrainians are smart. I think they've made the best of the situation. And there are actually a couple of smart people

that Trump has hired, including General Keith Kellogg, to run this Ukraine negotiation. And the answer on rare earth minerals is that they're mostly in eastern Ukraine, in the parts Ukraine that the Russians have occupied. So you want American companies in there, which the Ukrainians would be delighted to allow helping to mine rare earth minerals while the Ukraine's got to control that territory, not

Russia, Putin's not going to give us access to anything. And then the stuff about giving us our money back, obviously, that's just nonsense. Most of the money we've spent has been spent in the United States. So you're going to have to ask American companies and American workers to give the money back, which is just nonsense that he doesn't understand. But there's at least a decent shot that we're going to get to a point where the Russians say what I think the Russians are going to say in response to Trump's peace initiatives. They're going to tell him to go fuck himself.

And then the real question is, what does Trump do at that point? Does he double down on pressure on Russia because he's pissed at Putin for giving him the back of his hand or does he pressure the weaker party Ukraine to concede more? That's going to be the moment of truth. Well, maybe the desire for rare earths minerals, you know, going all the way back to taking the oil, you know, can, can, can nudge him in the right direction on that. I don't love it when it's like, you're talking about free countries and it's like, you never

know. I mean, you might be Russia tomorrow. I just don't even really love the voicing of that option being on the table, but here we are. He just doesn't understand the values and principles at stake in this conflict, but I think he also doesn't want to look like a loser and an idiot. And a lot of people have told him that if he lets Russia take over Ukraine,

it's gonna look worse than Biden and Afghanistan, which is true, objectively. So I hope that argument prevails. We'll see what happens. We'll see what happens. Speaking of US values-based alliances and diplomacy, I guess that was the next topic I wanted to get to with you since you did a lot of that work during the Obama administration. I was on a panel in Palm Springs with Karl Rove last week.

It's an interesting life we're leading. One of the points I was trying to make that he was objecting to was that, I mean, maybe it's not completely over. Like maybe the coffin isn't shut yet, but to me, it feels like this second Trump term means basically the end, if not the twilight of U S values based foreign policy and alliances that are based on that, because most of these countries aren't going to trust us. I mean, maybe it will continue with the United Kingdom and Israel,

but if you're one of these other countries around the globe that have a softer relationship with us, how could the type of work that you did in the Obama administration, how could they even take that at face value anymore? So I'm not as dark and gloomy as that. Great. That's good.

I try to bring on a mix of views. Yeah, look, so this sucks. We are right now giving up America's greatest comparative advantage, which is that we stand for something in the world. But people follow us not just because we're big and powerful and rich, but because they think that we were willing to use our power for something larger than ourselves. That's a huge advantage that we've got over China and

Any adversary that may come along. So yeah, we're totally giving that up right now but the demand for that kind of leadership is always going to be there and a United States under responsible leadership four years from now, eight years from now, is still going to be the one country in the world capable of providing it. This is a lot worse than other examples of this that we've experienced in the past.

But go back to the Bush administration, the combination of the Iraq War and Abu Ghraib and torture and waterboarding and all that stuff that I used to fight against. Back in those days, people were saying the same thing, that America's brand in the world was completely tarnished. But even then, like I would go to places like Egypt and Syria and all over the world and people would scream at me about what's your president doing?

You're losing your moral authority. And then the next question was, can we get a grant from USAID and can you introduce me to somebody in Don Rumsfeld's office because we really need America's help? Because like we're the only provider of that thing that people all around the world desperately need. So yeah, we get rid of Trump in four years. A lot of people are going to be angry at us. There'll be a lot of questions about whether we can be trusted for the long term, but we can absolutely rebuild the supply for what good people around the world will continue to demand.

I guess I can say this having been a Bush supporter during that time. I do think that, I mean, clearly there were ramifications in our relationships, particularly with the Muslim world, like for those actions over the long term. Maybe it didn't mean the end of them dealing with us. Maybe I was being a little extreme, but it certainly had an impact. I'm just curious, who knows how everything will shake out with USAID, et cetera, but with the legal challenges, what do you see as the biggest short to medium term ramifications of what's happening? Yeah. short to medium term than ramifications of what's happening. Yeah, USAID is a very practical ramification because there's material support that we're providing to good people around the world fighting for democracy and against corruption. All the stuff that China hates when we do, we're going to stop doing it

as much. You know, we'll see what happens with USAID, obviously. But I think the biggest ramification is just that the voice of the President of the United States is no longer going to be projecting the values that people find so attractive about the United States. He's going to sound very much like the leader of China, very much like the leader of Russia. He's going to be talking about global politics as if it's just a mercantile imperialistic competition

over resources and power in which bigger countries crush smaller countries and we're no different from anybody else. And that, again, that squanders the main comparative advantage that we have over our adversaries, the main reason why anybody would want to be our ally, would want to follow us, would want to do anything to help us. Are you hearing from, I'm sure you are, like hearing from people that you were working with, counterparties during the Obama administration, I mean, do you have any sense for

how bad on the ground reality is at the moment? Well, they're reeling and it's only been like, what, three weeks? Yeah. They're dealing with these tariff threats now and tariff realities. So I think the Europeans are now bracing, They know that they're probably going to be next. And the dilemma for anybody in the crosshairs is, do you stand up to it and say, well, we're going to retaliate, and you're going to feel the pain just as much as we're going to feel the pain? Or do you try to make a face-saving deal in the way

that Canada and Mexico did, where they give Trump a couple of crumbs and he gets to go back to his base and say, I won and they lost, but you avert the crisis that hurts people in your societies. Probably, their first instinct will be try to do that. What's your advice to them on that? Because if you look at Canada, right, they do the face saving deal, but then they still get hit with this 25% tariff on aluminum and steel, which is disproportionately hurting them.

And the clock is still on, right? Like three weeks from now, Trump's going to try to do another Monday night raw press conference where he, you know, gives Trudeau and Nohee and tries to get him to concede more, right? So, I mean, I don't know what the right play is. Yeah. I think my advice would be to actually push back more strongly. I think it's pretty clear from the opening salvo against Mexico and Canada, that Trump doesn't actually want the consequences of this fight,

or at least he fears those consequences because he completely backed down at least initially on the one hand, he feels compelled to do tariffs because he promised it and his base expects it and it makes them feel good. On the other hand, there are real consequences to the US economy and he would be held responsible for those consequences. would be held responsible for those consequences. So in a sense, my advice would be, if you're a powerful, large, powerful economy, like the EU, my advice would be to call his bluff. And yes, you would feel some pain. Americans would feel tremendous pain. I hate to say this, but at some point, I think people are going to have to learn that a tariff is a tax on American consumers,

a tariff is a tax on American manufacturers, that it's lose, lose, lose all around. If we just continue having these performative outbursts where it looks like he has threatened something and gotten something in return, then I think it just could continue to happen and eventually we're going to feel the pain anyway, as Canada has realized two weeks later. All right. This is why you're on the pod. You're on my level on this cleansing pain is what is going to be required here. That's not a lot of people don't want to say it, but I just, I think that it is true, right? Like that, that Trump's strongest position is to have press conferences,

call people weak, do smoke and mirrors, change the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America and not actually do anything meaningful, like that's his strongest hand, the weakest hand is if he actually has to follow through on the unpopular agenda that the Heritage Foundation dweebs are trying to push on him. So to that point, to your article, the Malinowski plan in short is basically fight, fight, fight. You had five points. I want to jump around a little bit. Your second one, because it's related to what we just talked about.

Now this was written before, kind of in the midst of the Trump, kind of, kayfabe tariff threats, but you wrote, the Democrats should force a vote in Congress on Trump's tariffs. I think that the same principle could be made true across a bunch of different issues where Trump is clearly bluffing and the policy divides the Republican conference and rather than letting them, you know, kind of allied those differences, do what is possible to force their hand to confront it. So talk about that. Well, so first of all, if I were still in Congress, one of the things I'd be doing is

asking the rules committee staff, talking about dweebs in a good way, to talking about dweebs in a good way, to give me a deep dive on every single provision in the House rules that allows for what's known as a privileged vote or privileged resolution, which means that a single member of Congress can bring an issue before the House. It's privileged. That means it has to get a vote. Most bills you introduce are just like for messaging. They don't go anywhere, right? But where can you actually force a vote? And one of those rules is when the president declares an emergency to do something like impose a sanction on a foreign country or impose

tariffs because he used an emergency declaration to impose those tariffs or threatened them against Canada and Mexico. But imposed against China, the ones that stayed through those. That's right. They did stay. So there are other ways of imposing tariffs. But when he uses a declaration of emergency, a single member of the House or Senate

can bring forward a resolution to repeal that state emergency. And there has to be a vote very, very quickly. So on tariffs, you know, I'm not sure if I would do this on China, but certainly on Canada, Mexico, the EU, I would absolutely force the Republicans to vote up or down on an action that is absolutely going to hurt workers, consumers, and manufacturers in their districts and in their states. And either you get a vote that actually defeats the tariff, Trump could veto it, so eventually, you know, he'll probably win that confrontation, but it either puts Republicans on the record against him,

which is politically useful, or it forces them to hold their nose and vote for something that's going to hurt their constituents badly and they will be punished for that. Pete Slauson Speaking of dweebs in a good way, is there a person in the Democratic caucus that is particularly attuned to these sorts of strategies? Like, who's our parliamentarian troublemaker over there among your former colleagues? Well, in the House, I can speak to that a little bit better. I think Jamie Raskin, who is brilliant and creative and understands that just like Trump understands, you have to keep going forward, forward, forward. You've got to keep the initiative and define the terms of the debate every single day. Jim McGovern, who may not be quite as well known, but he's the ranking Democrat on the

rules committee and absolutely, I think, would be not just a master of these rules, but willing to use them in creative and aggressive ways. Most Democrats are a little bit more cautious. I mean, you know, you've gotten to know a lot of Democrats the last few years. We tend to think through things a lot. We weigh the pros and cons of everything endlessly. We obviously want to make sure everything we do is legal,

and that's good. We overinterpret polls. We, we over interpret polls. We've got consultants who say you should only take on issues that are already popular and only oppose things that are already unpopular. Be very careful. And, you know, if we keep going that way, Trump will have made 60 decisions before we even make one. And we have to understand the kind of fight we're in.

We actually need to learn some things from him. He is very good, I think, at psychological warfare. And Democrats are not. So there was one forcing these votes in Congress to this point about Democrats being too agreeable. There's an upcoming big opportunity here with government funding, which runs out in mid-March. Sometimes they might place Republicans, since they control everything, might play some games with us and move it around a little bit. But, you know, essentially sometime in the next couple months, there'll be government shutdown and debt limit cliffs.

You wrote that they should not give Johnson a single vote on funding without certain assurances. Talk about how you think they should handle the upcoming budget negotiations. I was known as a moderate Democrat in the House. I think government shutdowns are stupid for all the obvious reasons, but this is a very unique situation, right? The government is being shut down. Yes. Big parts of it are being not just temporarily shut down, but dismantled and sold for scrap. And if I'm still in the House of Representatives,

it's March 14th or whatever the day is, and we're facing a decision about whether to fund the government for a few more months, what I would say to the Republicans is, you don't want a government shutdown? Fine. You have the votes. You have a majority in the House and Senate.

Be my guest. Fund the government. Oh, you can't do that because you're lame and you're in disarray. You need my help to do it? Okay. You know what? I'll give you my help. I'll help you pass it? Okay. You know what? I'll give you my help. I'll help you pass your Republican

budget. But I've got this one condition that the president actually has to respect the budget we pass. He's got to respect the laws we pass in the Constitution. So if we give him $100 for a Head Start program or a community health center or to feed hungry people around the world, he is going to spend $100 as Congress directs. That's my condition. And if you can't give me that, if you want me to pass a budget that he's going to treat like a piece of toilet paper, then I'm out. You're on your own. Do it yourselves. So that is the moment of truth. That's the ultimate moment of leverage where Democrats have in the house. They have the power to work their will. Yeah.

I think I might even be more extreme than you on this. They can't make that deal. Or is this what you're saying? It's Calvin ball. Like they can't make that deal because there's no, what assurance could they give you that Donald Trump would follow the law? They have no evidence that he would follow the law. That's a good question.

I think you can negotiate that. You can write language into the appropriations bill that strengthens your hand down the road. You can get written commitments from OMB and from the president. Can they go back on those? Yes, absolutely. But then that brings us back to the courts. The stronger commitments you get, if they break those commitments, then our hand when all of this eventually gets to the Supreme Court is even stronger.

And look, at the end of the day, I think they're not that tough. And I do think that if they're forced to back down, they will back down. I'm mostly with you. Here's who I'm not with. I want to go to the Democrat strategy for a second, then we'll get to the courts. I was reading my Politico Congress newsletter this morning, and here's a couple of your former colleagues. Sanford Bishop, a Democrat from Georgia, said, my folks don't want to shut down. When asked about the possibility about whether Democrats would go along with the shutdown, Richard Blumenthal, Democratic Senator, said, we use whatever levers and points of power we have,

but I don't think we should seek a shutdown. I know this is supposed to be an interview, but I'm gonna do a quick rant if you don't mind. Democrats that are listening, how hard is this? If a journalist asks you if you want to shut the government down, you say no. You say no, we don't. If the Trump administration will stop illegally

blocking funds for farmers who had contracts with the government and stop blocking funds for rural health centers and stop blocking funds for nurses and Meals on Wheels, then we'll come to the table. And until then, they're on their own. They control the government. It's up to them to come to us for a deal. If they want to shut the government down, we can't do anything to stop them. So they need to come to us hat in hand with a deal.

Otherwise the government shutdown is on them. I don't understand why this is so hard. Like explain to me here, people like why, like why are they acting like they have any role in the shutdown at all? They don't the good, the Republicans control everything. Yes. That's what I would say. You want to, you want to keep the government open be my guest

You got the votes. Yeah, this is only relevant if you need my help and if you need my help, you know what? I'm gonna be really conciliatory. I'm not gonna insist on progressive policy priorities. I'm not gonna insist on Democratic budget priorities I get it you won the election. What about making DC a state? Yeah, well, maybe. OK, then. We'll look under the table. We'll make DC a state. No, none of that shit, right? You won the election. You get to pass a budget. It's going to have stuff in it that I disagree with. It's going to have more cuts than I would like.

But at the very least, just fucking assure me that the budget we pass, the law we pass, is going to be respected. That is the most reasonable demand that you could make. And, you know, I think, look, explain my party. I think a lot of them were made for different times. You know, I don't dislike them for this. They're good people. They're just, they're used to a world

in which the rules are followed. And we're in a world where a president of the United States is trying to assert trying to amass powers that the Constitution doesn't give him, and he's daring us to stop him. And if we don't stop him, then he has those powers. And we're in a very, very different country. And so I think my message to Democrats is you have to have a stomach for the fight ahead.

If you don't, the exits are clearly marked. There are other people who can step up and lead for you if this is not a fight that you're comfortable waging. But it's also one that we can win. We've got all kinds of power that is real, unlike the kind of performative power that Trump is using. So use it. And also, Americans want leaders who are strong

and not leaders who are weak. So politically, it also pays to be strong. One more thing on this for our Dem friends listening. The next thing I'm just telling you what's coming is that they, in order to do the CR or whatever to kick the can, because they can't do anything, they're not capable. It's potentially possible that the Senate gets something passed. Eventually that'll take forever.

And that Trump bullies everybody into going along with it. Like that's potentially possible, but the house Republicans can't do anything. And so what they do now is they'll come and be like, okay, yeah, we will. We will give you a deal. Like we'll fund the obligations that we've already, that we already agreed to and like that's our concession. And that I think it will be tempting for some Democrats to be like, okay, that's a deal, we get emergency funding for California and we make sure that the USAID

funds that have already been appropriated, you know, are actually spent. And that's a deal. And I just, I implore everyone that is not a deal. Like they are not, like them doing the thing that they're legally obligated to do is not a concession. Yes, and also again, imagine you're a member of the House of Representatives and somebody shows you an appropriations bill or CR that funds USAID. But USAID has been shut down. Right. And the staff have been fired.

Like, what are we doing here? Like this piece of paper you're showing me is a lie. I will vote for it if it's the truth. I'm not going to vote for it if it's the lie. Right. And, you know, Democrats have to become comfortable using power. And I think politically, they will be rewarded if they project strength and confidence and a comfort with using power within the law, obviously, just as Trump is rewarded for it, right? I mean, even when he

does unpopular things, if he looks strong doing them, a lot of people like it. Correct. We're aligned so far. Good. Well, I mean, you could probably go like 20% further. I would still be aligned with you, but I'm taking it. Directionally, we're aligned. The court's question is more interesting to me.

This is a third suggestion that you had massive flood of legal challenges, which I'm for. I'm a little bit nervous that there's some backfiring happening among illegal challenges. But talk to us about what you think about the legal strategy. I mean, it's kind of obvious, right? I mean, they do illegal things, you got to challenge it. But the reason I stress this is that there are still a lot of folks out there who are hesitating for understandable reasons. So like take USAID. The employees union did file a suit on behalf of employees who were being unlawfully

forced to go on leave or fired, and they immediately won. Everybody's immediately winning, at least in terms of stays and temporary restraining orders. But most of the organizations in America and around the world that implement these programs, like take Catholic Relief Services, for example, they have not filed suits because they're afraid because they're afraid if we stick our necks out and file that suit, then we're in the crosshairs. They're still hoping against hope that maybe we can find a way to get to Marco Rubio. He's a good guy.

We've known him for many years or somebody else, or we can find a donor who can talk to Trump at some fundraiser and convince them, spare us. Maybe go after everyone else, but spare our wonderful program to feed children in this African country. Some of the big democracy promoting institutions like the National Democratic Institute, National Endowment for Democracy, International Republican Institute that are doing work with democracy campaigners, anti-corruption activists all around the world. They've also been laying low. They're worried if we file a suit, we're going to war against the Trump administration. And so they're all frozen. They're furloughing their staff. Their work is not happening.

People are suffering as a result. And I completely get why they're afraid. If you're running an organization like that, you also have an obligation to your employees. You want to keep them employed for the next four years. But if they were suing, they would be winning and their funds would be unfrozen. And I think we're at a time where I would want to see every single organization that spends us money in, in support of us interest and values around the world to band together right now and to file a joint lawsuit and to do it together.

So that's why I stress that. I agree with that. And particularly, I just would say one point is that Catholic beliefs are those organizations are actually going to be more sympathetic. Yeah, I agree. Really can have a better impact. Yeah. So I can continue.

But they haven't done it yet. So the other side of this though, is that we shouldn't over rely on the courts. I think we're going to win a lot of victories. I think, you know, most judges, even Trump judges, are going to uphold the law. But I could see a point where this gets to the Supreme Court. And I could see some justices saying, you know, we've got a dispute here between the executive branch

and the legislative branch. You guys are big boys. Work it out. Congress, you have the power of the purse under the constitution. If you think the president is usurping his authority, you're supposed to use the power of the purse just as we were discussing, right?

March 14th. Don't come to us to resolve your little dispute. There's a lot of precedent for the Supreme Court kind of backing away and forcing the branches to use their powers to fight it out. So at the end of the day, I think this may all come back to the Congress and the Democrats and the House. Are you willing to use the power of the purse

to preserve the power of the purse? How do you think that that then plays out? Because I think that if Congress actually voted on this stuff, there would, I think, be a lot of opposition to some of the various things that we've seen as far as the spending freezes are concerned. But the path of inertia from the speaker and the Senate majority leader would be just kind of let Trump and Elon do what they want. That's the path of least resistance. But if there is resistance from the Democrats, if they need Democratic votes for something, which they will,

and the Democrats do the obvious simple thing that we've just been discussing, then that's a real negotiation that Johnson would have to engage in. You get to that point, we're not going to save everything. Trump is still president, Republicans still have the majority. There'll be a lot of casualties, but we will have established that the Constitution is still worth the paper it's printed on, and that Congress does have power and that the president can't do any, everything he wants. And we have to establish that this year, because if we don't, then the next four years will truly be a nightmare. Let's talk about peptides for a minute. If you're like me, you're seeing them everywhere.

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I'm already rolling my eyes at the, but the price of eggs is up, talking points in part because like a lot of times when I hear Democrats saying this I'm stealing this idea from guy Ben Gross I follow on Twitter, but I thought he was so right that it feels like they're almost actually more mad at the voters Than they are at Trump, you know that like the but the egg prices are kind of like a troll of the the argument that voters voted for Trump because of egg prices and that there are better ways to like make the economic case. You know, my buddy Pat Dennis was tweeting this morning, grocery prices continue to climb

while Trump administration focuses on nonsense and linked to an announcement that Sean Duffy changed notice to air missions back to notice to air men. So this is our, this is our masculine political correctness memos. To me, there's something better there, right? Which is like, it's not getting better and these guys don't actually care about it. They care about the Gulf of America. But I wonder how you would think about handling that. Yeah, that's, that's, that's what I would do. Like, I mean, we do have to bring it back to issues that swing voters care about. And look, it's true, a lot of folks out there,

I canvassed and talked to voters in Jersey and in Pennsylvania, and they weren't saying, I gotta elect Trump because I want it to be the Gulf of America and I wanna take Greenland. Like there was inflation, it was the border, totally legitimate concerns. And we got to keep bringing it back to that. My kind of gimmicky suggestion in the article that you cited

was that Democrats come together around a message that, you know what? The guy's only been president for two or three weeks. It's actually not fair to say that he should have gotten the price of eggs and gas and housing down. Like we're going to be fair about it. So let's give him a reasonable deadline. Let's say six months and the clock starts ticking and maybe DNC puts up a website with like the key indicators and every single day it's like, well, you got 132 days left and oh gosh, the price of

eggs is actually higher. I mean, we're going to give you left and oh gosh, the price of eggs is actually higher. I mean, we're going to give you a chance. You said the price of gas would be under $2 and it doesn't look like it, but you know, we'll give you a chance, but let's just keep checking in on this, you know, make it a thing where like, it really does sort of feel like there's a clock ticking to keep the promises that you made, but a way of just keeping attention on the thing that Trump now wants everybody to forget.

One thing I'm trying to get folks to wrap their head around is there are two types of people that Trump did better with. Some of them like the crazy. Let's just be honest. They actually weren't engaged in a lot of the stuff that we're talking about and were not following the news that closely. And like they kind of like that Trump felt alpha and trolled people and that the Democrats seemed annoying, right? Like that, particularly with the younger men, like that demo is out

there. And then there's also the non-political people that you were like, were just kind of frustrated with the state of affairs in there, you know, that the costs were too high or a crime in their community they felt was out of control or whatever. And like talking to both of them, you know, kind of requires a different thing, right? Like you're doing, you need to do both, right? You need to kind of talk to both of those groups and you need to find ways to get to people that are less engaged with this stuff. And so the pivot, I'm with, I'm for it. Like the, we got six months, like where's the relief

for whatever website, whatever it's called, like pivoting back to that is good, but just not, you know what I mean? But also doing it in ways that can resonate. Yeah, and so you gotta be fair minded about it. Like, I mean, there are fair minded voters out there who were dissatisfied as anybody would be about the economic turmoil of the last few years.

And their argument was, let's give this guy a chance. Like he's different. He promised to shake things up. Things weren't working for me under Biden and the Democrats. All right. That's normal politics. So if you tell them on February 12th that Trump has failed to get the price of eggs down, like if they're reasonable people, they're not going to, that argument's not going to

resonate with them, right? Well, give them a chance. Maybe, maybe these tariffs will help us in some way. I don't know. But yeah, let's see it. Let's see it. Yeah. That's what I'm with.

Let them do it. Let's see it. Let's see the, let's, let's see the tariffs, the golden age. Like, we'll see what happens. Let's come, let's come back to us in 4th of July. Give them a chance, but then nail them when it's clear that it's not working. Yeah. Your last point was about, was something that I'm really kind of noodling on

because I don't, there's some truth to it, but I don't exactly know how, how to execute it and that is the big tech is the enemy and that, that Democrats should act accordingly and I don't know at some level I'm like, maybe really the answer is that the phones are the enemy or the algorithms are the enemy. People like Amazon, right? It's kind of hard to make Jeff Bezos a bad guy because Amazon brings stuff to your house in a day. And some people don't like it if you're a small business owner or you're a...

There are certain types of people that don't like Amazon, but broadly speaking, people like Amazon, right? Like broadly speaking, people like that they can FaceTime grandma, right? So like big tech, like, you know, you don't want to be a Luddite about it, right? And but clearly these guys are having a pernicious effect on society and there's so many ways that you can see it. And so I think it's maybe a good way for Democrats to take back the mantle of being whatever anti-establishment, anti-defending the status quo.

But I don't know, I'm a little nervous about that they might not do it the right way. But anyway, how do you see framing big tech as the enemy? Well, you may be quibbling with the phrase big tech, but I do think that social media companies in particular, both deserve to be targeted because they are responsible for breaking our politics and for a lot of other problems, including a horrible youth mental health crisis in this country, crisis of loneliness. A lot of what is making us unhappy right now is due to what social media has done to our society.

I think a lot of people see that. Just look at polling data. These companies are very, very unpopular with not just Democrats, but with independents and with Republicans. So it bugs me when I see leaders of my party, including my friend Hakeem Jeffries, trying to make up with Silicon Valley, trying to keep those donors on the side of Democrats, which then results in holding back on holding them accountable in the ways that I

think they deserve to be. So I think we just need to decide as a party that Musk and Zuckerberg and these tech bros with their weird James Bond villain visions of what the world should look like and the power that they should have, that they are the enemy and to fight that fight on behalf of our democracy but also on behalf of every parent of a child in america who is worried about what the stuff is doing to their kids brains and their happiness i think that would be both popular and extremely impactful now where can we do it we don't control congress except in the kind of negative ways that you and I have been discussing.

But I think every single blue state in America should be aggressively and in a coordinated fashion passing strong privacy legislation, data privacy laws, tech accountability laws to enable victims, particularly parents of kids who've committed suicide, for example, to sue these companies, AI safety legislation, because we're going to have AI and we need AI and it's going to do wonderful things, but everyone also knows it could end the world as we know it and the idea that we should unleash it without any safeguards is just crazy and no normal person would agree with that. So I think the states can lead the way here

and I think there is a unifying message that the next Democratic presidential candidate can run on effectively. I'm with you in principle and I think it's an interesting conversation Democrats need to keep having because it's like there's definitely something there. There's no doubt that a lot of our societal problems are downstream from the telephone,

not the rotary telephone, but the cell phone. And it's something that people feel and like resonates outside of typical partisan valence, you know. But then I think that there are other ways where, where Democrats could come at this and have it backfire. It's tricky. It's tricky because you're seeing this on a TikTok thing, right? Like everybody thought that they were aligned on that and then Trump bails and it's like, you know, and then the Democrats get kind of weak, weak need about it.

And like, there's not really a strong message of no actually tick tock is bad We should be we should ban it I know that there's gonna be some young people that that's that's them But like sorry like that's that's what we should do and maybe that ends up leading to backlash I don't know. It's just it's a sticky wicket. That's all I'm saying tick tock was Politically more complicated than most of the stuff that I'm talking about. Yeah. And yet even that, I don't think the backlash was that great. There are surveys of TikTok users that show that a lot of TikTok users would actually be quite happy if it disappeared.

Yeah. Remember, it's an addictive, it would be like asking drug addicts, you know, would you be better off without the heroin? A lot of them would say, yes. Yeah. They still keep going back to it. Right. Again, and that was more complicated.

But when you ask people, is it a good thing that the companies that deliver all of our information to us operate in a way that if a teenager is depressed, the company knows about it and starts sending

that teenager how to commit suicide videos? Is it healthy that if I'm a Republican, the only information I get is information that tells me the Democrats are evil and should be cast out of society. If I'm a Democrat, the only information I get is that Donald Trump is evil and that I should hate my neighbor for voting a different way. Like nobody thinks that's a good thing. And everybody feels the impact of it in their own lives in some way.

And I think Democrats have wanted to have it both ways. They want to criticize tech companies, but they also want their campaign contributions. And like, I think you got to choose. And I think there's a lot more political benefit in holding them accountable than there is in trying to play nice. Creating a trust and will is a very slow and time consuming process, leaving you less time for more important tasks. Trust and will makes creating your will easy and time efficient, meaning you can focus

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You seen anything? Oh, his father, he was a great governor of New Jersey. We absolutely love him, Democrats, Republicans. Yeah. So I ran against his son and the thing about him is that no one sees him at all. He's just kind of not fully there to put it kindly. I wouldn't call him a moderate. I wouldn't call him a MAGA. He's just not there. There are a few other moderate Republicans from swing districts who have at times spoken up. We saw that in the debate over Ukraine aid last year. So far this year we're not seeing anything. No, we're not seeing it. Although, you know, I remember when I was in the House,

there were Republicans who would come up to us and say, you guys have to do this or that to stand up to Trump. And we will cheer you from the sidelines. I remember after January 6th, Dan Crenshaw, for example. I kind of like, I mean, he has taken some risks and he has taken some heat going after the MAGA wing. Kind of grumpy. Yeah, he's a little prickly.

Complicated. No, he went up to one of my colleagues after January six and handed him a list of Republican members of the house that he thought Democrats should vote to censure. And I'm like, well, will Dan co-sponsor that resolution? Hmm. Yeah, not necessarily, but they really want us to do it. Where'd he end up on the impeachment vote? I don't remember.

Oh, I, you know, he did not vote for impeachment. But, you know, going back to the most important thing that we talked about, what Democrats should do in the government funding debate, there will absolutely be Republicans in the House and the Senate who are on our side in reality. And that's not meaningless because when it comes down to the negotiation, let's say Democrats hold the line and there's a negotiation with the White House, I think it's still useful to have those Republicans

in the room with the president saying, you know, the Democrats do have a point. We don't wanna throw out the baby with the bathwater and all these agencies that Musk is shutting down. Like you do, like Musk is going to hurt you. You do have to rein him in. Let's come to an agreement here that's going to preserve Congress's basic powers.

Like it's not much, but the fact that it is not much concur. It would still, it would still be helpful in the negotiation that I want to force and that I hope Democrats will force. I kind of hope they just shut it all down. We get to see what their authentic governing plans look like. So I call that the, that's the Russian strategy. That's the strategy the Russians use to beat Napoleon. Yeah.

Which is basically let them in, withdraw, let, you know, burn down your capital, burn all the crops and then wait for winter to come. Because winter's coming. I'm not with you. I'm not going to go that far. Yeah, that's fine. I had a long going back and forth friendly disagreement with Steve Hayes who's over at the dispatch and that I think I won. So that's why I bring it up. And this was

during the first term where his first Trump, he was of the view that it was good to have good people there. It was good to have these people in the room that you're talking about softening his edges. And my view was no, like people need to see what they picked. People need to see what they picked or else we're gonna be stuck with him. And here we are, nine years later. Maybe he would have risen from the ashes again, regardless, because we're a decadent people. I don't know. Who knows? Because of Joe Biden's mistakes and etc. But like, I do think that people were protected from their choices in a major way at the first time and it contributed to his maintaining popularity. So one man's opinion.

I know you don't have to go there. I don't have to get you on my burning the crops strategy. Okay. I'm happy you're at least on the fighting. The fighting part is step one. We can agree there and then kind of see how much. Yeah, how if we fight and we win then the crops won't get burnt. So this is a real question and I'm still on the side of let's try to fight and win as many of these battles as possible. Well that's that's true but but fighting and winning would require they would be weakened right and so like are a couple of different, like there are more than two outcomes here, right? Like what I'm concerned about the Stanford Bishop approach is conceding, is like going

to the table with him, is chamberlain if we're going to be doing historic, you know, analogies here, you know, because you don't want people to be mad at you. And so like accommodating, that's what I'm against. So fighting and getting them to back down. Okay. I'm for that, but fighting to the point where you don't come to an agreement and the line has to be held and then that means that they, you know, continue to advance their very unpopular policy agenda.

Like, I think it might come to that. We're not there right now Like, I think it might come to that. We're not there right now, but I think it might come to that. So anyway, we'll see. I'm one by one haranguing democratic, you're not in Congress anymore, so I don't need to harangue you. I'm one by one haranguing democratic Congress people about this. And one other colleague we had to ask you about, you can feel free to plead the fifth on this, but I think our listeners are going to want to

know the news. Nancy Mace of South Carolina last night used an hour long speech on the US House floor to accuse her ex-fiance of physically abusing her, recording sex acts without her consent and conspiring with business associates in acts of rape and pedophilia. She paired this with a hype video of herself crying and then cussing about it. And then she accused the Republican attorney general of South Carolina of not looking into this. The Republican attorney general of South Carolina put out a statement saying that he has not received any reports or requests for assistance from law

enforcement regarding any of these matters. He basically said, big question Mark, I have no idea what you're talking about. What's happening over there? I mean, she's doing dick checks in the bathroom and something is awry, I guess, among Nancy Mace. Do you have any theories for me on that? Or do you want to take a pass on that one? She's a very troubled person who needs help. I didn't know her well when I was in the house. She had a period when she seemed more reasonable, obviously more independent from Trump world.

And what's happening now, I think, is a subject more for psychological than political analysis. And it's kind of sad. Also kind of sad, one more of your former colleagues, Lauren Bovert, Page Six, she was spotted getting to a cab at 2.30 a.m. with Kid Rock last night. So at least some people are enjoying themselves, Tom. Like, you know?

Yeah, go girl. You know, my favorite news about Lauren Bovert recently is that she had a Politico subscription in her office. That's good. You got to keep up with what people are saying about you. She's paying Politico. All right. Oh, I had one other former colleague I wanted to ask you about. I know you're doing a lot of work on national security stuff. What about our new national security advisor, Mike Waltz?

So when I got to the house in January of 2019, one of my first missions was to find the Republicans I could work with on national security. And I got a lot of advice and got to know a lot of them. And there was kind of this solid group that I ended up working a lot with at first. And it included Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney, who at that point, Liz was a super partisan leader of the Republican caucus. Adam, Mike Gallagher from Wisconsin, Elise Stefanik, and Mike Waltz. It's interesting.

They all went in different directions. And interestingly, the one who I was closest to at first is Elise StefanFanick. And she ended up being the only member of the House of Representatives I would not make eye contact with, whose hand I would not shake because I think she is the least honorable person in Washington, D.C., deserving of absolutely nothing but scorn and hate for betraying every principle and every friend she ever had. So that's one extreme.

Was there something in particular? I mean, I had a whole chapter on Elise in my book, so I'm with you, but was there something that you've piqued my interest? Was there something in particular that happened? Oh, I mean, she was totally anti-Trump. I mean, like I had a lot of conversations with her. She wouldn't say his name for the first two years. She wouldn't even say his name.

She hated him so much. Her whole staff was all rhinos. And super smart and thoughtful about it. And like she co-sponsored two of my first national security bills that were designed to keep Trump from withdrawing our troops from South Korea and Syria. In 2019. And like we were like, we're going to work together and, and form this friendship two years later.

She's tweeting that I'm a corrupt pedophile. She really said pedophile? Well, the NRCC did. And I think she was, she was boosting some of that. Yeah. And, you know, we'll call anybody who recounted conversations with her from when she was normal. I mean, she said, it's all lies, never said those things. Like I have friends in the freedom caucus. I mean, I, they're Republican guys who I played football and baseball with, and

all the sports teams that I loved in the house of representatives and they were good dudes and they were always decent in their personal interactions and sincere in their convictions and I respect that. And no, at least completely different. The Alices are the worst. Yeah. No, give, give me The Elise's are the worst. Yeah. Give me a hundred Lauren Boeberts and Kid Rock in the back of a Uber over Elise. Yeah.

So she's one extreme. Liz and Adam, of course, are the other extreme. They went all the way. Mike Gallagher kind of kept his head down a little bit and focused on the very good work that he was doing on China policy and didn't do anything wrong, did a lot of things right, but he didn't step out in the way that Liz and Adam did. Mike Waltz was kind of, he didn't pull in a lease and he still continued to work well with Democrats, but he made his peace with MAGA in sufficiently that he got the job that he now has.

But he was one of them. He was absolutely an old fashioned Reagan, McCain, Bush, Republican. It's interesting. I wonder when the MAGA folks will know that his deputy too is a guy I know very well, who was Romney's foreign policy guy. So totally mainstream in the national security agency. So anyway, fighting. I'm with you.

Hopefully you can nudge your colleagues, your former colleagues that direction on the Democratic side of the aisle and let's stay in touch. You're welcome to write or pop off with us anytime. Thank you, sir. All right. Thanks so much to Tom Malinowski. Appreciate the energy, the fight, fight, fight. We'll be back tomorrow for another edition of the Bullock podcast. See you all then. Peace. Smiling in the making We gotta fight the powers at be

Got so many voices Saying all the same Giving up all around me Bases full of pain I try to play my music They say my music's too loud I try to play my music, they say my music's too loud I try talking about it, I got the big run around And when I roll with the punches I got knocked on the ground

By all this bullshit going down Hey, fight it, fight the power Fight, fight, baby, baby, baby Fight the power Fight Fight Fight it Fight the power Fight it, fight it, fight the power Fight it, fight it, fight the power Stand up and fight it, fight the power

Stand up, stand up, fight the power Fight it, fight it, fight the power The Board Podcast is produced by Katy Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.