The Chris Cuomo Project - Tulsi Gabbard's Case Against the Democratic Party

Episode Date: May 7, 2024

Tulsi Gabbard (four-term congresswoman and author, “For Love of Country: Leave the Democrat Party Behind”) joins Chris Cuomo to share why she left the Democratic Party, touching on her concerns about its increasingly partisan policies. She critiques the party's handling of key issues like free speech, foreign policy, and the role of government, arguing that its current trajectory undermines American values. Gabbard also discusses the impact of identity politics on national unity, the importance of a balanced foreign policy approach, and the need for genuine accountability in government. Follow and subscribe to The Chris Cuomo Project on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube for new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday: https://linktr.ee/cuomoproject Join Chris Ad-Free On Substack: http://thechriscuomoproject.substack.com" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If the parties are the problem, what's the solution? Leave the parties, easy for me to say. Tulsi Gabbard lived it. She left the Democratic Party. Was not easy, was not popular. But you have to hear her argument for why. She gets what the problem is. She gets what the solution is.

And I believe she makes a damn strong case for what we want in leaders in America Okay, and whether you're gonna agree with me about Tulsi or not doesn't have to be Tulsi But you got to have people who are thinking the way that she is Which is about you and common concerns and not their own fate within this fealty based party system Okay, Chris Cuomo here, of course not their own fate within this fealty based party system. Okay? Chris Cuomo here, of course. Thank you for joining me on the Chris Cuomo project,

subscribing, following, checking me out on News Nation. Go into that sub stack, let's keep it up, man. You get the podcast ad free, you get my whole journey on long COVID. I'm happy to be transparent about it. It's a little embarrassing, it's a little frightening that I got all this funky stuff in my blood, but I know a lot of you are dealing with the same thing, so you go there and check it out.

Tulsi Gabbard is a great guest for people who want to be independents because she is now an independent. Be a critical thinker. Wear your independents with the free agent gear. That's why we're putting it out there so we can then use the money to give the good causes Which by the way all my brothers and sisters out there who think I'm some kind of Zionist shill we gave 10 grand To help the kids who are suffering on the ground in Gaza. You know why? Because we care about what needs to be cared about which is the kids and the innocents about what needs to be cared about, which is the kids and the innocents suffering. It doesn't mean you back a terror organization.

It's that kind of crazy think that's gotten us into the political problems we have. And the solution is to be independent and a critical thinker and not just be sheeple. And that's where Tulsa Gabbard is coming from. So let's start with a conversation about what's happening in the nation, why she made the move she did, and where she believes that politics is both problem and solution. So let's talk about what's going on in the world around us right now. What is your take on why we're seeing this on the campuses and unpack it for me in terms of why it's happening?

Do you think there is a there there to something being behind this and how it's being responded to? What does this mean to you, what's happening? Well, first of all, I think it's important to say from the outset that free speech is something that we should celebrate in our country. Peaceful protests, protests on campuses across the country, this has been a hallmark of our history and our democracy and the center of what it means to live in a free society where you have an open and thriving marketplace of ideas.

So, this is not, my view is not saying like, well, you know, they shouldn't be allowed to speak or, you know, that they're, shouldn't be allowed to go and go out on the lawn and hold the signs. Like peaceful protest is important. I think it's actually important in our democratic society. You fought for it.

Exactly. And whether I like what they're saying or not, that's completely not the point. Free speech should be defended as free speech, whether you agree, disagree, or even find their speech to be abhorrent. The problem with what we're seeing here is that this is yet another example

of a complete collapse of just basic law and order, the rule of law, we're seeing these pockets of anarchists, the rhetoric that is coming not from all, but from some of these people to call for a genocide against Jewish people to say that what happened on October 7th should happen 10,000 times over. This is obviously goes beyond the pale when we talk about the defense of free speech.

You're calling for violence against your fellow students who happen to be Jewish or faculty or people who work at, professors who work at these universities. And the fact that we've gotten to a place in these different cities, whether it's the university leadership or the silence of certain political leaders, including President Joe Biden,

that's gotten us to the point where students and faculty and staff do not feel safe on their own campuses. We're talking about Ivy League universities where they pay a lot of money to send your kid to school there and to be told, well, you've got to go home because this campus is not safe for you. It just speaks to this erosion of what should be foundational and common sense for us in our country.

So their pushback is, yeah, then stop supporting a genocide. Stop funding the killing machine that is the state of Israel. And we're just here talking about it. You're actually doing it as a US government. And that's the real problem. Do you believe they are justified in seeing Israel as the bad actor in the Middle East?

Well, let's start with here at home first. Again, they're entitled to their views, their opinions, and their right to express those opinions. Where the line is crossed is when you make it a completely unsafe environment here. You know, they're challenging of the US government policy on Israel. Everyone is open and free to be able to do that.

You know, I believe firmly that Israel has a right to defend itself. I believe firmly that the people of Palestine, my heart goes out to them for the situation that they are in that they have been for a very long time. The issue here that people are not pointing out and where many of these college students are falling susceptible to

is this radical Islamist ideology that Hamas is putting out. They are saying, I am Hamas. They are saying the Hamas talking points. And this is something that's not only happening here in this instance, obviously it's happening around the world. And this is the issue that I wish President Biden was taking on. Why can't he?

Well, he's terrified. Why? Would be my guess, because he's afraid of being called an Islamophobe. I believe that he, by the pro-Hamas, the radical Islamist supporters, i.e. the Ilhan Omar's of the world and voters in places like Michigan. People who, and here's the thing,

and this is an important thing to point out, these Islamist terrorist groups, Al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, you go down the list, they have been waging ideological warfare for a very long time. They make no bones about their ideological objective, which is Sharia law and Islamists rule and you come and be a part of this and you support this,

or else you will face the consequences. There must be, and this was George Bush after 9-11, he said, we will defeat them militarily and ideologically, but the ideological warfare never happened. Will never happen though. Across different administrations. I mean, you went over there with a whole generation who tried to do it.

Here's the thing though, you have to, their ideology stands diametrically opposed to our fundamental ideology of freedom in the constitution, what we're talking about. Which is why they hate us. Right, exactly. And this is the ideology that says you can go out and you can criticize your own government.

You can go out and say all of these things. You can have disagreements. We will defend that right to free speech. Those freedoms do not exist under Sharia law and this Islamist caliphate that they're pushing for. Because there has not been this kind of pushback, whether it be by our president of the United States or other leaders in largely Western society,

including Europe, you've got a lot of kids who are going to school who are not rooted in, and this goes back to, we're not really teaching the constitution of schools and civics and all these things. So you've got a generation of- The Holocaust. A third of them. A third of them are unsure that the Holocaust

is what we say it is. That's right. And so when you look at that framework, it's not surprising then that many of these young people You look at that like framework, it's not surprising then that many of these young people are very vulnerable and susceptible to this ideology that it's very intentionally being pushed. So going back to your question about why hasn't Joe Biden talked about this?

And other leaders, they're either intellectually incapable of making the argument and drawing the distinction between the radical Islamist ideology being pushed by these terrorist organizations versus the ideology of peace-loving Muslim people, vast majority here and around the world. There is a clear distinction to be made. And combating that radical ismist ideology with our ideology of freedom, what it means to live in a free society, what we value and cherish, what makes our country unique and different. There's a political thing happening too, as we mentioned, where he's afraid of being criticized by certain elements of his base

and that it may cost him votes. See, I see it as all related and it was, you know, very special to me to have you now, because for me, my understanding of what's happening right now started actually with you during the Syrian civil conflict. And I'll tell the story for you guys in a second, but there aren't enough Arabs in this

country to determine a national election. But there are enough people who are sympathetic to radical ideology on the far left to make Joe Biden nervous. And I don't see a group of stupid kids. I see the opposite. I see if fundamentalists and fundamentalist thought can take root on your most educated and actively intellectually curious people,

what are they gonna do with the rest of us? During the Syria civil conflict, which is technically still ongoing, Tulsi was very outspoken about how America better rethink this, okay, and what we get involved in and how, because there's like no good exit for us. Got dumped on all over the place, looked weak, which, and when people were saying,

oh, Tulsi Gabbard's weak, I was like, well, Tulsi Gabbard can be a lot of things. She's not weak, that's for sure. So I started looking into it, and what you were tapping into there is, hey, you gotta pick what you wanna be a part of. And I started to see all this online propaganda that was really persuasive and powerful,

and I realized they're ahead of us. The bad guys are ahead of us. Tulsi and the American warriors are gonna beat them on any battlefield ever. That's real. But in the digital space, we're not even close to them. And they were propagandizing them about who was doing what in Syria.

And now I see it in full effect that Iran as the head of the snake through all these proxies is feeding ideas into the internet. It's like seven to one on TikTok, false videos of what's happening. And there's plenty of real suffering. But I think that's what scares me about right now. It's not all we can't control our campuses.

Yeah, we can. It's that the digital warfare that's going on, what they call cyber war, we're getting our asses kicked, I think. And I think this is the latest example of it, that you have these guys saying we're Hamas. After 9-11, nobody was saying we're the Taliban. Nobody was saying anything because we didn't have social media.

So they couldn't weaponize information the way they are right now. How concerned are you? To me, I see all these connected dots. Like Chris Ray comes out months ago and says, hey, I got to tell you this Middle East conflict, it's going to cause a lot of trouble at home. And I remember when he said it,

I was like, what do you mean trouble at home? You have more Jews than Arabs in America, which is the only place that's true on the planet. He was talking about this. How worried are you that national security now involves idea manipulation of fundamentalist ideas taking roots in America, maybe through one of the two main political parties?

Yeah, I'm very concerned. We all should be very concerned by this. This is not something new. What's new are the new-ish, are the platforms that allow it to spread far more quickly and to take root. And so yes, of course it's happening on social media. ISIS was very sophisticated in their push and were able to recruit a lot of people from the West because of their very intentional and strategic information operation ideological warfare. We have people in, you know, the mainstream media is such like a term

that's become normal, but like who's the mainstream media these such like a term that's become normal, but like who is the mainstream media these days? But you look at a lot of people who came from the industry that you left, who are, they're not saying, well, yeah, I am Hamas, but they are feeding into this same kind of narrative and parroting some of those talking points that makes it far more widespread

or they're not calling out and speaking the truth for what it is because of that same kind of fear of what will the repercussions be. That's the concern that not only our own leadership here in the United States should have, we should all be aware of this, but really this is the threat that is posed to civilization and all freedom loving countries.

We don't have to theorize about where this path leads. We look to countries like France who have already had large sections of their country. Now people live there under Sharia law in France. Persians, Iranian advocates against the theocracy there, they have become huge players online in combating what's happening here, not because they are Zionist motivators necessarily, doesn't really have anything

to do with Israel. It has to do with their fear as Americans now that they really believe, and I never really accepted this until like a month ago, by the way, that, oh yeah, this is what happened to us in Iran. What you're seeing with your campuses and your intellectual groups now, yeah, that's how they did it to us there.

And in my mind, right, you know, transparency. You're talking about the overthrow. Yeah. Yeah. In my mind, I was like, no, you guys were always like this, right? Because I'm as big an idiot as anybody, right? So then I go back and I start to read and I'm like, oh, oh, I get it. They weren't always a fundamentalist, theological, Islamist place.

No, quite the opposite, actually. And they are saying, so I started having them on the show because they're like, I'm telling you, two generations ago, this is what happened to us. Was these people came in and we started to see that they were like, the institutions are bad, the institutions are unfair. We have to get back to the only true law,

which is God's law. And we have to see that, that that's what the real root of our culture is. And we have to go back to that because it's obvious and real and solid that we could bank on it. And these people are corrupt. We have to get to what is not corrupt and Allah is what's not corrupt. And they became a fundamentalist state. And I still believe I can't see that ever happening here.

But I would have never thought that I would see kids with sadat scarves on, white kids, some of them Jewish, few, but still any. And here they are saying these things that never happened after 9-11, but it's happening now. I spent a couple of days with a family who kindly hosted me over Passover, and we were having some of these discussions over dinner. And two things that they said that really stood out to me

was one of their kids who's, I don't know, 25, 26 years old raised the question, are we as Jewish people safe in America anymore? That's a very real and visceral feeling and question that I would not have imagined would happen in our lifetimes. But we can see and understand why it's real and why it exists. And people are looking at how they're going to bring up their own kids and their own families. And the other thing that we talked about was,

to your point about we didn't see this after 9-11. There was a kind of unity across America from people of all races, religions, backgrounds, ages. If that kind of horrific attack were to happen in our country today, would we see that kind of horrific attack were to happen in our country today, would we see that kind of unity or would we see a group of people saying, well, this was justified or making some kind of argument? We can have, and you and I have had in the past

and we should have conversations and debates around foreign policy decisions, around the kinds of decisions that our government made past and we should have conversations and debates around foreign policy decisions, around the kinds of decisions that our government made that led to the overthrow in Iran that completely changed their trajectory as well as our relationship with Iran. We have to understand history. We have to understand how we got here, but also know, okay, well, we can't change the past.

So how do we create a better path forward? How do we create better policies forward? How do we come together and say, well, you and I can disagree on something even strongly, but we will stand proudly and defend our right to even have the dialogue and the conversation. That's what concerns me most right now in our country is that these fundamental freedoms,

like the First Amendment, freedom of expression, freedom of speech, a free press, these are things that are being openly debated on some of these college campuses about whether or not it's relevant today and what government's role should be in quote unquote policing free speech. Who gets to be the authority that says,

well, I deem your speech as acceptable and your speech is hate speech. This is the America we're living in today. And my concern is if we continue down this path, we will wake up in a country one day where we are not free. We are self-censoring more than people already feel like they have to now. And we, we the people,

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Cause you get 50% off your first box, plus 20% off the next month. That's code Cuomo 50 at factormeals.com slash Cuomo 50, and you get 50% off your first box, plus 20% off your next month while your subscription is active. I mean, what we have going for us, and this has certainly been a huge part

of your popularity base, is it's still a bubble. Most of the stuff that's going on in the media is dealing with the few, not the many. You have of course introduced yourself to a much larger swath of the country where they're onlookers on this. They are not participants. Nobody in this country really identifies by party anymore. Yeah, I think with the Gallup poll a couple of weeks ago is 43%.

Yeah. by party anymore. Yeah, I think with the Gallup poll a couple of weeks ago it was 43%. Yeah, it's the fastest growing part of the electorate is a non-partisan. Now, are some of them posers? Yeah, because they're forced into a party system. And lean in one direction or another, and I get it. And that's okay, but I believe that the answer to all of our problems is the party system

because it creates fundamental division. And this is why Washington and his farewell address, which he didn't write by the way, right? So Hamilton and Madison, if you're gonna have guys working for you, that was a good, that was a big brain. They worked on the farewell address, right? Cause he was thinking about giving it two different times.

It was one fourth of the speech was, hey, this sectarian stuff is a problem. This norse, I don't like it. These parties, they're a big problem. I'll never join one. They're trying to force me into the wigs. I think it's a huge mistake. That's why I won't serve another term. They want to give you 15 terms, whatever.

I'm not doing it. Avoid the parties. A small group of men are gonna take their advantage over everybody else's. So it always happens. He was dead right. And I believe that the parties, either you need more so that there's gotta be sharing

and coalitions, or you've gotta take them out of the business of running everything because they're only about their own advantage, which obviously became sickening to you, the amount of compromise. Now, you knew and all of your advisors knew that the only rule that's left in that game that's worth anything is you don't quit on the party. You know, it's like,

it's the only thing you're not supposed to do because they hit you with the, but if you do this, Tulsi, then you're going to have these crazies on the right win all the time. So you can't leave. That is the argument. Yeah. You can't do this because they're worse. And you came to a mindset that you were public about, which is now it's just all bad. And this party is not what it was supposed to be anyway, anymore.

And you left. And it's no, you know, you've got big names on the back of your book, right? Meghan McCain hates me by the way. Rogan, Tucker Carlson, who I just sat down with. That was a great conversation you and Tucker had, by the way. It was only for this, right?

And he got a kick out of it because, you know, he gets a kick out of everything. But, and at least I got a little satisfaction that he knew he was being a dick to me all that time. At least I knew that he was seeing it the same way I was. But no Democrats on here, because you went bad on a team that's not about ideas. It's about tribalism.

Have any of them said to you on the, I understand why you did it, I respect it? Not after the fact, no. Well, Kirsten Sinema, yes. She went down the same path and became an independent herself. I had a couple of conversations with Joe Manchin that were very friendly that wouldn't surprise you. But one of the interesting things was that when I was running for president in 2020,

it's going back to DC for votes. Obviously, I was trying to bring about the kind of change that I talk about in my book where I think the Democratic Party and the country needs to go from a governance standpoint, but I was trying to do it from within. And I tried as vice chair of the DNC, obviously, running on this platform of we need the Democratic Party to be a party of the little guy, bring back the party of JFK, bring back the party of Martin Luther King. And when I would go back to DC for votes, and I remember one day specifically, you've seen the house floor in like the back corner where the C-span cameras don't really hit.

One or two of my former Democrat colleagues would come up and have a little conversation and whisper, I love everything you're doing, keep up the great work, but don't tell anybody that I said this. I hate that. Don't you hate it? But it's like, you know, they see the kind of consequences and wrath and attacks and smears and cancellation that I was going through in real time. And they're like, I don't want any part of that.

No way. I had people who I was, I was very good friends with, who I got elected at the same time to Congress with. I walked down the street, I see them come, they crossed the other side of the street because they don't want to be caught in a picture with me. I was working with one of my colleagues, I think it was like a civil liberties legislation

before I left and my staff talked to their staff, I talked to him and I was like, yeah, of course, yeah, this is important. Staff talked and my staff talked to their staff I talked to him and I was like, yeah, of course Yeah, this is important staff talked and his staff responded said no we're not gonna allow our boss to be a part of this because we can't allow them to be infected by your boss's toxicity and So, you know it got it got to the point where I recognized I Have tried my best within the Democratic Party to bring about significant change and there is not only no interest, there's a very hostile reaction. Oh yeah, because it's binary.

So all that matters is the party. I know there are still people there in elected office who have more common sense and who don't like what's going on, but they're they're terrified and they're not in a place where they're ready to sacrifice their political identity as a Democrat Because that's the common leader in truth what you're doing Doesn't make common sense Because you can't run if you're not in a party and they stay in the party because they have Tied their fate to the reductive nature of the two-party system

that they're gonna ride it till it dies. And we'll probably die along with it. So you're doing something that certainly doesn't make good sense. You wanna run for office, how are you gonna run? Look at Bobby Kennedy. Now, I believe that you check a lot of boxes that he doesn't in fairness as legitimate.

I hate that word. I know, and I don't mean to be nasty to him, but he's never held office. He's got a huge name and there's some charisma attributes, but you check a lot of boxes. Nobody thought it was crazy that you wanted to run for president, but it is crazy to run without a party

because they dominate the system. So you can leave very brave. I wasn't surprised because you're a ballsy person, right? Especially if pushed and given an idea that, well, it's not like you're gonna leave, so shut up. You know, like that was the mistake, right? So, but what do you do now? Yeah.

I am literally, practically speaking, traveling the country using every medium possible and available to, I mean, look at the title of the book. It is, for love of country, leave the Democrat Party behind. It's a very clear message. And I go through in the book my experiences throughout my time being involved with politics, throughout my time as a soldier being deployed

into different war zones. The experiences that I had that chapter by chapter both detail what I see as the biggest challenges and problems and threats that we face today. The Democrat elites role, and I'm specific face today, the Democrat elites role. And I'm specific to point out the elite versus the party, because I know there are a lot of Democrats across the country, everyday Americans who really care about our country and are concerned about the direction that the leadership of the National Party has taken.

And most importantly, what we must do about it. We the people. And I'm so happy you talked about Hamilton and Washington. And that's what gives me hope, is when we look back at those founding documents, we look at the vision that our country's founders had for us, they warned us against this hyper partisanship and both parties or parties having too much power, but they also reminded

us of the solution, which is us. It's we the people, not we the people of this party or that party, it's we the people owning the power that's in our hands in this democratic republic that we get to decide who gets to be elected, who gets to serve in those positions, we have the responsibility to hold them accountable and to bring about our government exists only with the consent of the governed. So if you stay home or if you park in your little tribe

and your little camp and you're not willing to look outside of it or have conversations with people. And I speak to a lot of different groups. I was speaking with the Republican group in Texas recently. And my message was go out and have conversations with people who would never feel welcome in this room with all of you today. Go out and ask them, don't say like,

well, here's what I stand for. Are you in or are you out? Ask them what they care about. Ask what they're concerned about. What are their hopes for their kids and their families? Actually have a real conversation where you listen, share what's in your heart, share why you care about our country and why you're so engaged in politics. We have an opportunity and I would say a responsibility. If we love this country and we value freedom

and we cherish peace, we have a responsibility to come together as Americans outside of whatever party affiliation, even outside of, you know, okay, well, you've got an idea on how we address healthcare. My idea might be different. We're going to disagree. Maybe we whatever the case may be, our founders disagreed on a lot of things fiercely, but they came together around those most fundamental principles that we find in our founding documents. Our freedoms are under attack in an unprecedented manner right now. If we don't come together and take a stand to defend those freedoms, then they will be lost and I believe virtually impossible to get back.

Who wants to take them? The party in power, the Biden-Harris administration, the Democrat elite. Because what they see is a free people allowed to think for themselves, speak for themselves, gather information and make our own decisions on our views and opinions on different issues as a direct threat to their power, which is why we're seeing this kind of unprecedented government overreach and abusive power where they're saying, okay, well, you know, big tech company X, Y or Z, these are the people whose accounts need to be silenced or censored. The kind of misuse of surveillance tools within our own government to figure out what's going on and who is saying what, where are they going, what are they doing. Using these tools against Americans when we have very real, you know, you look at what's

happening in the border. Millions of people coming in from all over the world, unvetted, many of them. I spent a few days down the border in San Diego last month. And one of the things I saw along the border, wall, ID cards, passports, government documents being torn up, burned like all over. I didn't have to look very far.

I take two steps, I find another one, another one, and another one. And I saw and talked to illegal immigrants coming across the border throughout the two days, I find another one, another one, another one, and I saw and talked to illegal immigrants coming across the border throughout the two days that I was there. Had conversation, where are you from? Why did you come here? What are your plans?

Where are you gonna go? And, you know, these, yeah, I'm gonna go and there's a woman in Utah, I'm gonna go see. These are, they come in, they know where, they know where Border Patrol is gonna pick them up. I saw groups of 20 and 50, I saw groups of three or 400,

they get picked up, they put in their asylum paperwork, and they're on a plane the next day. Maybe they have ID cards, maybe they don't, but there's no way that we have any idea who is in our country, where they are, or what their motives are. Open borders. I think that it's clear there's a long-term political motivation of saying, well, you know,

these are people who are very likely going to be on our side. I think they've also painted themselves into a corner where the narrative is if you are against illegal immigration, you are racist. And this was something that we dealt with on the 2020 debate stage, that it became a racist statement for me to stand

on that stage and say, we need secure borders. You can't have a nation without secure borders. I think that's what it is, is that they have become so tied to diversity, not that diversity is a bad thing, right? That is our gift, right? You don't get Tulsi Gabbard. Diversity of what though? That's the thing.

It should be of ideas that are a function of cultural background, right? Because they go hand in hand. Not just checking boxes. What's valuable about you as a leader are your experiences that are a function of your culture, your geography, your gender, all these things. But it's about the value of the ideas that came from them, right? You can have all those boxes and you know people who check the same boxes as you,

but you wouldn't want them to be your leader. So, but they've become so tied to the idea that any resistance to the expansion of that idea makes you an enemy of the idea. I don't believe in the voter packing part. I don't think there's enough strategic thinking in that organization for that. But the problem you're then faced with only rhetorically is, so you're saying the Republicans are better in all these regards. I'm saying that where we stand today, again,

focusing on the fundamental pillars of our country in freedom and in rule of law, in having a secure nation, there is a clear distinction between the two parties where we sit today. I'm not here to say, well, like, you know, there are prominent Republicans who I have and have had very public disagreements with. The recent laws that were passed that increased our government's ability to conduct warrantless surveillance against everyday Americans. That's a huge civil liberties violation that both Democrats and Republicans came together

around and we should call them out for that, the unconstitutional nature of that. It's, you know, the reality is the Republican Party today is, there's a lot of disagreement when you look at bills and things that are happening in Congress today. There is that healthy tension in that party that I think should be there across both parties where you have different ideas being debated and legislation that people within their own party may have five different factions

who are pushing in different directions. I think that's a good thing. So why didn't you join that party? I'm in a unique position to be able to speak from that independent platform and to be able to, I want what's best for our country. That's what I want. And so I wanna be able to reach and connect

with as many people as possible to help kind of rekindle and relight that feeling of hope that we can come together, that we can build a path forward for us as Americans, as a country, and I want to maximize that opportunity. But you can't run if you're not in a party. I'm not running for anything right now. If and when that happens,

I will be confronted with that practical reality, but I'm not running for anything. What do you tell people about how to look at what's going on with the former president right now? And all the lawsuits and how he feels about the institutions of the country and what it means in terms of qualification for leadership? There's a whole lot wrapped up in that question.

I would just say that, I have over these last five, six years started to question things that I would not have thought to question before. Seeing the truth about what has worked in our government and what has not worked, seeing the truth about how in many of these different government agencies, decisions are being made maybe by elected officials or maybe by unelected bureaucrats that serve the bureaucracy rather than actually serving the people.

So broadly, I would say we should welcome that dialogue and that debate about what is actually happening in our government, what are our leaders actually doing, is it, and this is the basis, the lens, I think we should see all of these things through. Is it in the best interest of the American people or not? When I look at these two guys, I see it as the bottom. When I look at Trump and Biden, I see this is what America's producing.

These are two best choices. I don't see them as equal characters. Trump is hard to beat when it comes to bad character. He's like an outspoken advocate of his own kind of lack of character. But what better argument do you have about the failure of the party system than that this is what it produced? Yeah.

Oh, no. Donald Trump is the best Republican in the country. If you look at... Biden is the best Democrat? It is a failure of the two-party system, and it is a failure of all of the arms of those two-party systems. Media, big tech, social media, the big money, the fact that, and again,

I experienced this in real time in Congress, the fact that you have, a person has the ability to write an unlimited amount of money to fund a political party, but for a candidate running for Congress, whatever the limit is, I think now it's around $3,000. And so when that person gets elected to Congress, there is a hugely disproportionate amount of leverage

in the hands of the political party to say, oh no, you don't get to vote your conscience, you don't even necessarily get to vote your district, you're gonna do what the party wants you to do. And that's a major problem when we look at, well, how are decisions made? They're made to serve the best interests of the party, not to serve the interests of the people who send their elected representatives to advocate for them in Washington.

Are you telling people to leave the parties? So if I'm a registered Republican, are you saying leave? My message right now today is about leaving the Democratic Party because the elite in the Democratic Party, their actions, their decisions, and their policies are directly challenging and undermining our constitutional rights and freedoms. They are undermining the rule of law.

They are undermining our country's security, and we cannot allow them to continue. I would love to see a future where you have people who are independent thinkers, critical thinkers, common sense minded people in both political parties who are actually committed to the Constitution, who will have those open debates and allow that best idea to win. That's not the Democratic Party of today. So in this lead up to the election, I'm urging people to lead the Democratic Party and make their decision on what is in the

best interest of freedom and America. I mean, even if they could get past the allegiance issue, right, which is like this Jets Patriots reality, right? Where like you hate the other one, even though you don't really know anything about it. The idea of, well, I'm going to lead the other one even though you don't really know anything about it The idea of well, I'm gonna leave the Democrats. I'm gonna join the Republicans. I just don't get the value proposition Well, here's here's what I don't like I'm gonna be a Trump guy now. I don't believe in blind following of any group It always bothered me for for you know As long as I was in Congress for eight years and throughout that 2020 cycle, just over and over you hear vote blue no matter who.

Like that's crazy. Is that really the example that you wanna set for your kids or the next like, just follow, be a blind follower. You are a member of the team. And that team spirit was something that on day one when I got elected to Congress was made very clear. You are a part of this team now,

you will fight for that team, you will not make the other team look good. And that is at the heart of what is wrong. But the other team plays the same way. Oh, they do, they absolutely do. I talk about that in my book. We went and did bipartisan things when I first got elected. And then at a certain point, after week one,

it was like, okay, here's your separate rooms, here's your separate buses to get to here and there. And all of the things that go along with that. That is, our founders recognized it. That is not what is in the best interest of our country. So it's about putting country first. Ultimately, it's about putting country first. It's not too far gone.

If it was too far gone, I would not have written this book and I'd be in Hawaii surfing and hanging out with my family. And it is not too far gone, but I am concerned that we are close to that precipice. What do you see happening next? I don't know. I really don't know. Who wins?

This, I don't know. I don't know. I is? This, I don't know. I don't know. I think that anyone who claims to know what the result will be on November 6th doesn't know what they're talking about. Every day we're waking up to new situations. I feel like we're in an unprecedented environment on every level. And that will have an impact on this election. We have multiple wars either being waged or bubbling up in different parts of the world.

Just recently, I think it was yesterday, I saw, you know, we have American service members building this humanitarian aid bridge to Gaza. Of course, we should be providing humanitarian aid to the Palestinian people. We also need to be honest and candid about the consequences of this specific course of action that they are taking. Secretary of Defense Austin was before Congress, he was asked a question about the risk being posed

to American servicemen and women. And obviously if you put them at risk in a war that we are not directly engaged in, and they get either intentionally or unintentionally pulled into it, or harmed or killed in that, then we have a whole other decision point that we've got to make as a country. So they were asking, are they at risk? And his response was, well, we have no boots on the ground. We have no boots on the ground.

And I fucking hate that statement because it is such a lie. And this is one example of this. Oh, we have no boots on the ground. Like, okay, you're being dishonest. And this came through in the follow-up question because he said, yes, they could be shot either by a single firearm or by a rocket.

Yes, they could be shot even though their boots are not on the ground. And then he said, well, you know, they will be armed and have the right to defend themselves. What are you going to do? And this is where I believe they have not thought through this plan, which speaks to the bigger repetition we see in so many of the foreign policy decisions. They have not thought things through to understand what are the second and third, fourth order of effects. So there's a plausible scenario where you have them building this humanitarian aid bridge.

You have people who hate America, Hamas, they're ever present, and they have already said they will not allow any foreign entity on their soil. Let's say there's a rocket that's fired. Let's say you have five, 10, 20 Americans who either killed or injured as they are building this or they're not boots on the ground, but they are killed in this mission that they have been given. What do we do as a country then? What is President Biden going to do then?

They will not be in a position to quote unquote, defend themselves and fire back. That's ridiculous. So, you know, these are the things, and I don't remember how I got started on this, but the point really comes down to the decision-making and leadership and the unknown. And so in that scenario, you could see very quickly

how an unintentional act on our part, a good hearted act on our part, which I think is not been thought through or being executed well in a way that does not put our country and our service men and women unnecessarily at risk could very quickly spiral out of control into a true geopolitical regional war. What I didn't understand is,

and I know that you can do this because I was talking to the guys from Jordan, why didn't America say, listen, we can't go near it, there are too many people who don't like us. Why didn't America say, listen, we can't go near it. There are too many people who don't like us. You guys do it. The Arab community, you do it. We'll give you all the plans and shit to do it.

Not that you don't know how to build a bridge. It's not like, you know, we're re rethinking the wheel here, but we'll chip in any way you want. We're just not going to be there because they're going to kill us. And then we're going to have to do what we do. So you guys build it because Hamas isn't going to go after you guys. That would be stupid for them. I don't know why we didn't do that.

Unless the answer is because they won't, the Arabs. Which is a bigger question. Which is a bigger question. Everybody loves the Palestinians until you have to do something for them in that part of the world. And then they come up with these constructive arguments about how, well, we don't want to evacuate them from their own land.

No, you have too many Palestinians already. You don't want any of them. And there is. And I think they're also concerned about an Islamist terrorist group like Hamas taking root in their own country and their own communities. Yeah, I mean, right now, the Palestinians are like the favorite puppy of the Arab community, but they all treat the Palestinians like shit at every other time.

And I feel like that hasn't come through enough in the sympathies that we're seeing take root in America that like, you're being, they're trying to tell you that like somehow these people are metaphor for how all the Arab world is treated. No one treats these people worse than the Arab world. But that comes down to leadership also.

And look, I praise you for what you're doing. And I think it's the right thing to do. And I don't see the parties as different in this respect. I understand why you, you know the Democratic Party better. That's why that was your place to start with your own move and your own argument. You can't make the same arguments about the Republicans you were in the party deeply like that.

But I see them as the same. I think that independent is the way to go and to have multi-parties or to find a way to just take the power out of the parties and controlling the elections. If you could just have open primaries, you'd start to get more reasonable people in there. But the party's controlling. Do you think an independent could run and win? If you remove the party control over the state primaries, it's not in the constitution,

it's not really the creature of federal law, it's state by state and they're all in parties. So they've given the parties all of this fiat within the process. So the answer has to be, well, can you? Yes. Will you? No. But if you were to have all open primaries

and to remove the graft system and the job systems that go along with the control of the state primaries for federal office obviously, then yeah. Then you're right back in. You're right back in. If you can get on the ballots and there's not someone saying, well, there go all your jobs. You're never gonna get any jobs here again.

Then yeah, you can get in. And it's what the American people want. What they don't understand is the idea is a lot more attractive right now than the reality because of the party control. But I think what you need to wake people up to as a leader is they don't have to have this control, you know. We've just given it to them.

They don't have any right to it. And the problem with saying that is that they're all in on the game, so they're not gonna echo it. You know what I mean? They'll, you know, they just, they get quiet about it. But it's definitely the way we have to go because the way it is isn't working. That's the best thing you have going for you.

Yeah, that's true. Nobody likes the way it is. That's true. So everybody's open to change. Thank you, my friend. Listen, you are- So good to see you again. You are always welcome.

Thank you. I'd love to come back. You're a big shot, big shot TV contract. Shut up. But you're always welcome wherever I am. I'm always behind what you're doing. I appreciate what you're doing. And as you said, we could disagree eight out of 10.

You'd probably be right, seven out of eight. That's why you're the leader and I'm the question asker. But that's not what's important. I believe what you're about. I think you're good people. We may have different ideas. Maybe yours are better. I haven't figured it out yet.

But you gotta get away from, well, Tulsi's bad because we disagree. Exactly. And there's a, I had mentioned about this Republican event that I spoke at, there was a hunger for that. They weren't taken aback by my message. They were saying, yes,

like the leaders of that county's party, it was a county Republican event, the leaders of that county's party, it was a county Republican event, the leaders of that party asked me, before they knew what I was gonna say, they're like, please, please deliver a message to this crowd of a thousand people that we need to reach outside of our party and actually talk to people.

And so I was very heartened to know that even before, like I was gonna say that regardless, it's what I say everywhere I go, but the fact that they were recognizing that this is the direction gave me some hope. Yeah, it would be nice if they could say it. Oh yeah. Because they gotta be afraid.

You don't, I think it's brave of you to do that, and it's right for you to do it, so it's worth the risk, in my opinion. We also know that everywhere in life, except in our politics, and I'll end taking your time on this, this is happening everywhere else in your life, except in your political life. You have friends, I guarantee you, where you don't agree with them about things, but it doesn't change how you feel now And I've said to guys who I fish with

Listen, you're loving me here. Not just because you're on my boat using my gas or my gas or my bait It's good to have friends with boats, right? But if you if you were to see me as the CNN guy or as the media guy You hate me all sudden, but you know, I care about the same things that you do Yeah, and I love you and I'm there for you even if I think you're an idiot, you know, and you feel the same way about me about those things. We just stopped doing that when it comes to politics and now you got to hate them. It's insane.

And I say to them, just leave that for football. Yeah. You can hate Patriots fans. Right, right, right. Just hate them. That's fine. Leave it there though. Not in our politics.

Right. I wish you all good things. Thank you, Chris. And thank you for fighting the good fight. It's great to see you. Thank you. You don't have to agree. And if I had gone down a menu list of different controversies and issues, Tulsi Gabbard and I would have our disagreements, but I think she's good people. I think she's coming from a good place. And I believe we have common concerns. If I don't like her answers, I don't have to vote for her. Guess what?

And that's okay. You don't have to be enemies. That's why she had to leave the party. Because it can't just be all about us, screw everybody else. It's not what this country can be if it wants to succeed. Thank you for subscribing. Thank you for following. I want to hear your questions and comments about this. I'll see you on News Nation, 8P and 11P, every weekday night. Thank you for

joining the Substack. It's worth the money if you don't want to see the ads, okay? And it's worth the money if you don't wanna see the ads and learn about everything I'm trying to do to get through long COVID. I'm gonna be posting more and more there about food, movement, right? And the protocols that I'm taking, all these botanicals, about 10 different things a day I'm taking right now.

Is it too much? I feel like that sometimes, but my doctor feels otherwise and she's the one who knows, and you get to learn from her as well, all at the sub stack. My friends, the challenges are real. If we face them together, we will face them for the better. Let's get after it.