The Dispatch Podcast - One of Ten

Episode Date: January 29, 2021

Ohio Representative Anthony Gonzalez was one of only 10 GOP House members who voted for President Trump’s second impeachment, and he’s faced quite a bit of backlash from his constituents for doing so. “In the long arc of history, I believe it was the right vote, and I believe it sends the right message,” Congressman Gonzalez tells Sarah and Steve on today’s show. But Gonzalez still fears for the future of his party, especially considering most Republican voters still believe the election was stolen: “I don’t know how to govern in a world where we believe things that aren’t real.” Tune in to hear Gonzalez talk about social media censorship, our country’s crisis of leadership, and his former NFL career playing for the Indianapolis Colts. Show Notes: -Take our podcast survey Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Isgird, joined by Steve Hayes. And this week, we are talking to Congressman Anthony Gonzalez. He is a representative of Ohio's 16th Congressional District. He was elected in 2018. And he's one of the 10 Republicans who broke with their party to vote in favor of the article of impeachment in the House just a couple weeks ago. Let's dive right in. Congressman, you were one of only 10 votes in favor of impeachment. As you were thinking through how to take that vote, were you thinking of it more as a backward-looking vote about specific behavior

on the impeachment herself or a forward-looking vote on the future of the Republican Party, the movement, conservatism. How did you start thinking about which way to vote? Yeah, so great question. So, you know, for me, all I can do is vote on what's in front of me, like what the text of what I'm looking at is and what the vote that day is. And the way that I kind of processed it was I looked at three different time periods. One, from the time that the Electoral College met to January 6th, the speech on January 6th, and then the immediate aftermath while the Capitol was being stormed. And when you look at all of those, you know, I think the period between the Electoral College meeting and the certification was a terrible time. I think

what the president was doing with respect to the Georgia Secretary of State, but also state legislatures around the country. That was awful. I mean, the whole goal of the campaign became to literally overturn an election that the Electoral College had basically already decided. And so I had a whole mountain of problems with that. I know the call with the Secretary of State was a major problem. And then the speech, I thought the speech itself, frankly, it had sort of mixed language in it. There were elements where he did say, you know, go peacefully, but on top of that,

there was, you know, you have to fight, you have to take back your country. There was a line in there about, you know, when you catch people in a fraud, you play by very different rules. And we know, obviously, what happened in the immediate aftermath. But the thing that really put me over the top

was the period of time between sort of when the capital was being stormed, and ultimately the National Guard showing up and asking myself, you know, what was the president doing during that time? And speaking to people who were in the White House with him that day, to understand sort of mindset and how people were processing what was unfolding. And what the reality is, you know, the Congress and the vice president were under attack, were under attack by a mom.

and the president didn't step up, in my opinion, in nearly the right way to calm it down, to stop it. You know, I think I'd probably be a no if, you know, he had seen all this and immediately said, hey, cut this out, here comes the National Guard, we're done. This isn't what I wanted. But instead, you know, we had multiple hours go by. And the first tweet that went out was actually attacking the vice president while the capital was under siege. And so, you know, it's frankly the last thing on earth I wanted to do because I celebrated a lot of policy wins that the president had over the last four years. And I think his policies, I said this a million times, I think his policies are spot on for Northeast Ohio, which is where I'm privileged to represent. But when you look at the totality of the actions, I believe it tipped the scale to impeachable.

and it's the last thing on earth I wanted to do, obviously, but I felt like it had to be done. Steve? You had to know as you contemplated your vote in those days before you made it, that this would cause you some political problems, to be blunt about it. How much did that factor into your thinking and what's been the reaction? that you've got both from your constituents and your colleagues. Yeah, so look, I think that with this job, which I've always said, this is the greatest job I've ever had, the opportunity to represent a community that gave me and my family so much were Cuban immigrants.

My father immigrated here in the 60s and welcomed us and allowed us to live this beautiful American life. The opportunity to represent Ohio's 16th district outside of marrying my wife is the greatest honor I've ever had in my life, may be the greatest honor I ever have in my life. And so I'm very appreciative of the opportunity and always will be. Having said that, you have to love your country and you have to adhere to your oath more strongly than you do your job. And, you know, I don't know what political fate, you know, will play out.

I don't. But I do know that as I was sitting in. my office contemplating the vote, look, I was very anxious and had a lot of people who I trust, who I love, who are saying, hey, don't do this. You know, this is going to have some major political ramifications. And, you know, you're going to have a lot of cleanup to do. And they are right. There's there's no doubt about that. But at the end of the day, again, I go back to you have to, you have to adhere to your vote, you have to love your vote, you have to love the country, if you love the Constitution more than you love your job. And if my fate is ultimately that,

you know, I don't get to come back, I will do that at peace. Now, there's some sort of personal safety issues that have come up that are less exciting to deal with. And frankly, we're still trying to navigate that as a family. But in terms of the political consequences, they are what they are. And we'll, we'll manage. them as they come up and, you know, we'll do the best we can. But there are people who are very angry, obviously. But there's also, I'll say this, there's also a groundswell of folks who reach out and say things like, hey, just so you know you're not alone, there's a lot of people out there who support what you did, but we feel like we have to be quiet because, you know, the backlash

is so strong out there. And so it's, it's been mixed. And, you know, the last thing I'll say on it. I think as time plays out, which is the great healer of all wounds, I do think the perception of the boat will change. How it changes and how much it changes, I don't know. But I do think over time and the more opportunities I have to talk to my voters directly, the better off will all be. Given that, do you think that the Republican Party, as it stands now is better off dividing into two parties, the Patriot Party and the Republican Party or two different options? Like, can this union that currently is trying to hold a conservative movement, which I think you belong to, and a populist movement, can that union really survive? This

feels more like a two-legged stool these days. Yeah, you know, it's up to us, right? It's up to the people, the country and it's up to elected representatives to lead through this. I mean, I personally believe that as a country, we have a giant void of principled leadership. And so that needs to be filled some kind of way. I hope to be a part of that story. And I hope that the conservative movement is carrying a banner on that story. But, you know, and I'm confident that we will, provided we do a handful of things, one of which is to simply stop lying to people. It's a very simple concept. But if we are going...

What an outrageous suggestion. I know. It's crazy. But the truth is, you know, we have what I consider to be in this country in an epistemological crisis, which is sort of a crisis. a crisis of fact. And it's multifaceted. We're, you know, we're sort of in this space where there's a perpetually escalating set of tensions between the press, who is, you know, primarily left-leaning and President Trump and the Republican Party in the conservative movement, who's right-leaning. And the truth is everybody does play a role in this, where, you know,

the condescension and the bias that we see out of the left has pours gasoline on top of a fire. The president undermines confidence by attacking the press, but then also over the last two months, just frankly putting a lot of nonsense into the world. And people don't know what to believe anymore. And so there's this crisis of fact and knowledge. And what fills it, or what has filled it in the last couple months, has been garbage. And that garbage was latched onto by some politicians and other opportunistic people and spewed into the ether and people lashed onto it and they believed it and that's to me I think one of the biggest problems we have is we've lost this sense of truth and objectivity and so you know if we're going to earn the trust back

of the American people on a big scale on a national scale in my opinion it has to start with us as leaders in our communities as leaders in Washington coming together and saying cut out the nonsense we're not going to go down this QAnon path we're going to stick to objective reality and tell people the truth sometimes they're not going to like the truth okay that's fine but but we have to start there because I don't know how to govern in a world where we believe things that aren't real I just I don't know how to do my job in that world and so I'm not I'm personally not going to go down that path but but it's it's going to require genuine leadership and it's got to start in our communities and it's got to start here and we all

have a voice there's 435 of us and we have to be responsible with that voice well let me I'd like to spend some time on that because it's something of an obsession of mine um you go back to the days actually before the election and then looking forward to the election. And, you know, clearly there was a concerted effort to, in my view, deceive voters, most of the Republican voters about what had happened. The argument was the election was stolen. And the argument started really, as I say, before the election, it was carried through to after the election. And then, you know, you had sort of propagandists for the president, his lawyers, Lynn Wood, Sidney Powell, Rudy Giuliani, and others in effect trying to convince people the election was stolen when time after time after

time as Sarah has pointed out repeatedly in the courts and elsewhere when it came time to provide evidence to back these claims up the evidence was lacking and yet you know here we are in the end of January if you look at public opinion polling now today you still have a majority of Republicans, a strong majority of Republicans in some cases, three quarters of Republicans in one recent poll I saw, who believed that the election was stolen. So I guess I'm, well, I've got about 50 questions for you. One, how many of your colleagues in the House, many of whom made these arguments, do you think actually believe the election was stolen? It's hard to say, honestly. I don't, you know, I can't get inside people's minds.

I do think the majority of the people who are making the argument believe it in some form and did it in a way that they felt was true and honest. Some, frankly, I mean, just openly said, I got to do the political thing here. And, you know, I may agree with you, but I'm going to do what, you know, what's going to save my hide. And I, in a way, I sort of respect that because it's so honest. It's honest and it's dishonesty. Yeah, yeah.

It's like, well, hey, you were right, but I don't really care. In praise of open cowards. Before we move on from that point, though, because let's set aside this vote, there are plenty of times, I'm sure, as a congressman, where, you know, there's a vote on puppies and rainbows, but it's never going to pass the actual legislative process. In this case, the impeachment, he is not going to be convicted in the Senate. So is it in that sense, you know, if it's a suicide vote, we're laughing about it. But like, what is the point if those people were going to lose their seat? Would we rather have them in Congress or we'd rather take a symbolic vote? Yeah.

So that's always the question, right? And I think for me personally, just how I fell down on it. I mean, you saw how I voted. But how I fell down on it was, look, you know, all I can, all I can. ask myself is, is this article of impeachment sufficient to me? And then I have to go through that process. And yeah, I could make a million political arguments, right? Like, we're all smart enough to come up with a political argument or a rationalization for any vote that we want. These are, you know, we're all intelligent people. And so, you know, you know, at that point, it's everybody

kind of figures out how they want to play it. But I will tell you, one argument people make, not just on this vote, but on all votes, when you're in this job, as they say, hey, look, you know, you may be on this, but, you know, the country's better off if you're in Congress or, you know, the district's better off if you're in Congress. So, you know, you shouldn't put yourself in these politically precarious positions because, you know, you're going to put yourself at risk. And I understand that argument, but I think it's always a question about short-term versus long-term benefit to the country. And to me, when, you know, in the short run, that's probably true.

But in the long arc of history, when we look back on sort of what happened on January 6th and what that was, which to me was an attempt to overthrow a certified election, first by going through the courts, then by going to state legislatures, then by trying to intimidate Congress, then by sending a mob. to the capital. In the totality of that, for me, for my kids, I want to know that every American, when they grow up, says to themselves, that was wrong. And the United States of America doesn't tolerate it. And so it's always a long-term versus short-term game. And so, yes, in the short run, maybe you lose your seat. Maybe you don't get to come back. But in the long

arc of history, I believe it was the right vote, and I believe it sends the right message. Among the biggest questions, when you look at the public opinion polling right now, and you see that, you know, 70% of Republicans still believe that the election was either fraudulent or stolen or not legitimate, how do you overcome that? What do your constituents believe and how do you communicate to them that this is, not true. Yeah. So I think this is the central question. I'll say this. In my conversations with constituents, when I sit down and I go through what actually happened on election night and how this all played out, it typically gets people to go, okay, that's right. I do remember that. Because

I think we need to remember, right, like there were a lot of irresponsible politicians and a lot of things that were being said that shouldn't have been said. And right, we've gone down that path. we can keep going down it, but I think it's sort of handled that. But having said that, the reality is people went to bed thinking one thing, okay, and then they woke up and a whole bunch of other things started happening. And that's just confusing, okay? And, you know, it takes somebody who's, in my opinion, who's in the business who was following the elections and knew, okay, so here's what I just did this with two constituents.

I said, remember when Ohio's results first got posted, and President Trump was down, and I was down in my election by like one or two points, and immediately at that point, I knew we were going to win. And why is that? It's because the way that Ohio was going to count their absentee ballots, which were going to be overwhelmingly democratic, they were going to count, they were going to tabulate them and post them first. Okay, so the first results we were going to see were going to be absentee ballots, and we knew that. the Democrats were going to vote absentee, then our voters show up, right? And now the count starts catching up, and you see the president wins Ohio by eight points. I win my election by 28, and nobody questions it because we posted our absentees right away, and then the election day vote comes in, and you're more or less know who wins the election before you go to bed.

In Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan, they did the reverse, and Georgia. And so that's confusing for people. They go to bed, the president's ahead. The guy they voted for is ahead. And then all of a sudden, it looks like they're finding ballots and all of it. It's like, what the heck is going on? Like, why is the number keep changing? There's a very rational explanation, which is those states didn't count the absentee vote until after the in-person vote was done for the most part, right?

That's generally how it went. And so when you kind of walk through the logic train, people start to go, okay, I get that. And I've found that that's very effective. The problem is it takes about five minutes to walk through it. And you can't do that with everybody. Given that, would you support making some federal standards of how elections are counted and reported on election day? Yeah. So normally I would say no, right?

Republicans are typically against that. But after this election, yeah, I think it is time to open that box and say, what can we do to build confidence in the election? electorate, because whether you think this election was stolen or not, and whether you think this whole thing was a farce, I think we would all agree that we want people who have confidence in the election. And so, you know, that should be a priority. And if we can build it by putting some federal standards in place, having some auditing requirements, just sort of good democratic process practices, I would be open to that, whereas, you know, pre-election, I would have said, no, I think each state should be able to do this how they want. I think we figured out

that there are some vulnerabilities when you go down that path. Is there any future for such legislation, any bipartisan support for something like that? I think you could get something on the auditing. I mean, look, after the 2016 election, there was a big push from my Democratic colleagues to do some things on election reform and security. Some of those ideas that we rejected, I think people would be open to in a piecemeal fashion. But, you know, that's going to require them to want to work with us so far. That has not been the case at all. And so, you know, I don't want to say I'm hopeful or pessimistic, but that's just the political reality. Not long ago, I saw someone go through a sudden loss, and it was a stark reminder of how quickly life can change and why protecting

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position a little bit in in recent days saying she didn't tell me she was going to do this the communications on it was terrible he's not yet saying he's for it but he's really not saying strongly that he's against it uh did did i mean it sounds like you viewed this as a vote of conscience she has said that she viewed it as a vote of conscience is that something that um ought to get people thrown out of leadership and if so what a what are What's the future for votes of conscience? Yeah. So first off, you know, members shouldn't be campaigning against one another.

And, you know, look, if we are going to, in fact, build a cohesive team based on principle that's going to go win back the House and hopefully the Senate and potentially the White House in four years, this has got to stop. But, you know, for me, it comes down to, you know, what was told to us by leadership. And, you know, leadership, a little inside the beltway thing, they typically give you recommendations on votes, especially difficult votes, you know, whatever it is. Leadership says no, and here are the reasons why. And then they whip it. You get a call from Steve Scalese or his team, and they make sure that the votes are where they want.

That's how it typically works. In this particular instance, leadership gave no recommendation, and there was no whip. And so we were told to vote our conscience. Okay, so we all voted our conscience. And now we're finding out that there might be a punishment for doing exactly what we were told to do. So I just think it's silly. And frankly, again, we need to cut this stuff out as quickly as we can, figure out who we are as a party, who we want to be, who we want to represent to the American people, or what we want to represent to the American people. And then we need to move forward.

And, you know, if we get into this sort of interim period where we're going to have our own internal set of fights and battles, you know, I'm ready for that. But my hope is that cooler heads will prevail and, you know, we'll do the right thing, which I think is to figure out who we want to be and then represent accordingly. What role do social media platforms have to play in it? What role do regular media platforms have to play in that? And where does Congress come in to regulate those? Yeah, you know, it's an interesting question. So, you know, when I think of, again, back to this sort of epistemological crisis and what's happened, you know, we have basically nobody trusts the media anymore. So you have this collapse of traditional information and knowledge that sort of goes. by the wayside. And then it gets filled by, again, sort of self-interested cynical politicians, online bloggers. And then anyone who wears, quote, your jersey. And this is a left-hand right issue, right? This isn't just a right issue. Anyone who wears your jersey. And that could be in the form of an email chain. That could be a post on Facebook from somebody you've never met before.

And that becomes your gospel. And because of the way social media platforms are set up, basically engagement engines, it just pushes this stuff, the more incendiary, the better, and the further it flies, the more people who buy it, and all of a sudden, you know, you get a situation where it's 9 p.m. the night of the insurrection, and all of a sudden the story is it's Antifa, who did it, which is just patently false. I mean, you could just look at the arrest reports. I think there's one guy, so far that I've seen, who's associated with Antifa and the riots in the summer, which were all so wrong, okay, and we can spend time there. But the overwhelming majority of the arrests are QAnon people and militia groups. And,

you know, I don't consider them conservatives, but, you know, they are under the conservative banner. They put themselves under the conservative banner. I consider them more anarchists. But regardless, you know, that whole mechanism is fueled largely by social media. And, you know, I think we need to be honest with ourselves that we don't know as a society. We don't know as a Congress what the right answer is. I have some specific thoughts, which I'm not wedded to, but basically, I think once you get to a certain size and you have a certain breach, that there are rules that you're going to need to follow as a platform that have to do with, one, respecting people's legitimate free speech.

so not hate speech, not calling for violence, nothing like that, but actually respecting people's views because you're seeing a lot of conservatives getting kicked off these platforms. But also, I think they have a responsibility to make sure that the platforms aren't abused for these sorts of things, which is a tough tightrope to walk, admittedly. But at some point we're going to have to tackle it. How much should that just be up to them?

If you don't like who Twitter is kicking off or keeping on or the culture that they've created, you don't have to go on Twitter. You have other options. You have Facebook. You have Yelp reviews. I mean, but you don't, right? Like at some point, you don't. So, I mean, this is, I think this is a broader topic.

So when I talk to my friends who work in Silicon Valley who work in technology, I used to work out there in technology, they will tell you. And it's one of my best friends works at Instagram. And he would say, you have no idea how bad it is for you. Like, you guys have no chance. I mean, it's like our entire company is out to get you, essentially. And these are private conversations. And I keep saying, you know, it'd be nice if somebody would, from inside would write an op-ed telling me this.

But, you know, but he would lose his job. And so, you know, you have this system. And it's not just Facebook. It's not just Twitter. It's not just Instagram. It's not just Google. It's all across the board. But it's all of them individually.

I mean, if we found out that like Target and Walmart and Kmart, you know, all didn't sell something we liked, I'm not, would we like, it's confusing to me that because they all share something, but they're not coordinating it, that that's what makes it right for regulation. I don't know for sure. They're not coordinating it. Okay. I think that's something that that should be looked at.

I really do. But to me, a big part of this conversation is their size. So to me, like once you hit a certain size and you have a certain breach and you control this much information, you should now be subject to different rules, in my opinion. I mean, Facebook, I don't know how many Americans are on it, 250 million, roughly. Twitter similarly. I mean, this is Google controls all the information, the majority of the information. information that we see. And so in a world where these platforms control what you see,

what you have access to, and how you communicate politically, socially, et cetera, to such a large degree, I think that it's time to take a look and say, okay, we need we need to revisit how we regulate them because they are so central. I mean, look at this. Look at what we're seeing. I mean, this insurrection was spawned online essentially by a bunch of garbage. And so in that world, I think we need to open up the hood and say, okay, how are we going to regulate these things to make sure that we respect people's rights, their free speech rights, but we also don't have a repeat of this sort of thing. And that's, admittedly, that is a tough nut to crack. I do not have the answer as I sit here today saying repeal section 230 fixes everything is

not true. It would help in some respects. It would do nothing in others. And it requires a lot of thoughtfulness. And I'll give you one final point on it. When I think of legislation, I put it sort of in a little two-by-two matrix of politically easy and difficult versus intellectually easy and difficult. This one is both intellectually difficult and politically difficult, which means it's going to take a long, long time to figure it out. Do you think that the latest Reddit GameStop stock issue will help or hurt efforts for Congress to reach in to some of these tech companies? You know, that one's an interesting one because it's activated both the right and left.

And, you know, you're seeing AOC and Ted Cruz basically have the same opinion, which is, hey, what's going on here? It looks like a bunch of people, retail investors who, you know, were coordinating to buy a stock and, you know, to basically squeeze the short out. and all of a sudden they got shut down by their own platform. And the Reddit site went down for a period of time. And so now people are going, hey, why are you shutting these guys down? These are just mom and pop investors.

It looks like you're shutting them down to protect the giant hedge fund on the back end, in this case, Citadel. Now, there might be very legitimate reasons why Robin Hood chose to restrict trading on that. Like, this is actually a complicated issue financially. but the appearances look like big tech and high finance sort of teamed up to hit hurt the little guy and so maybe that maybe that does create a window and again I'm not saying that's exactly what happened because again there there are legitimate reasons why a Robin Hood might say hey we need to throttle the trading on this financial reasons stability reasons for their firm

but but the appearances are that big tech kind of screwed the little guy here and that's what conservatives have been complaining about online for the better part of the last four years. Yeah, I mean, I think isn't it, so I'm torn about this. I don't think this is an easy issue. I have found myself, I come with a certain set of assumptions and then I read a piece from our David French making an argument that challenges all my assumptions and I change my mind and then I read three or four other things. I change my mind again. And I guess to me, that would suggest a moment of real caution when you're talking about having the government step in because these things, and not just because this is, you know, my conscience, but it is all so unclear. It's not, it's not easy to understand. And I guess my concern, if you have the government step in, I think looking under the hood is appropriate. I think asking the questions, I think holding hearings, I think trying to gain a better understanding and share that better understanding with the American public is not only appropriate but necessary. It's the next step. It's the regulating step that I, that I, it's just hard for me to see how it works in a practical basis.

And the, you know, the companies that are big and dominant today may not be big and dominant in 10 years or 15 years. I mean, 15 years ago, we thought that Yahoo was going to rule the world forever. And, you know, Yahoo's not a bit player anymore, but they're not, it's not the same. What, when you, when you look at what Twitter and Facebook did with President Trump, I didn't like it. I thought that they shouldn't have de-platformed him. I think he was tweeting nonsense all the time. He's tweeting, he's been tweeting lies for, for longer than five years. He's been tweeting lies for a long time. And I think, poisoning the information environment. I mean, I think the way that you describe it as an epistemological

crisis is exactly right. The fundamental problem, and I'm sure you hear this, your constituents all the time, we heard it as we were trying to put together the dispatches. People just don't know what's true. And when you have somebody like Donald Trump step into that void, particularly given, I think, the well-justified skepticism that folks on the center right have of the mainstream media, they looked at Donald Trump and they say, okay, well, that must be true. Shutting that down, I think, has led to a healthier information environment. But the ramifications, the long-term implications of that are worrisome. I mean, you're not letting better speech defeat or marginalized bad speech.

You're just trying to shut it down. Yeah. I mean, look, I don't want to use an extreme example, but, like, I'm sure that the Chinese Communist Party would say, this is why we have a firewall. This is why we've got a speech day. Like, we do it because it makes our society more stable. That's not American. That's not America. And I don't want to live in that environment.

And so, you know, that I agree with you. I can't stand his Twitter account. I couldn't stand the Twitter account for four years. I mean, the number of times we were about to vote on something, and then here comes a tweet. you're like what on earth was more than i can count on two hands um not to mention you know just the vitriol and all that it spawned um so i i didn't care for it at all uh but you know he's still the president of the united states uh there was they still hypocritically left in a common eon uh they left dictators around the world right i mean it's there's no legitimate uh

basis and standard for what they were doing, or no consistent standard, certainly. And so I think that's a huge problem. But the one thing you said, which I think is, again, the most interesting and difficult problem to solve is people don't know what happened. And when I, like, I asked my mom, I said, mom, what do you think happened in this election? And I've asked a lot of people this question. And they pause. They don't say anything for about 10 seconds.

And they say, I don't know. I have no idea what happened. And that's dangerous. That's how, especially with something so fundamental to democracy, voting and an election, and people literally do not know what happened. And we can say, well, that's because Trump lied to him. And that's because of this, that and that's, okay, fine. But that's a big problem.

Okay. And so that's where people like me have to, you know, set the record straight and say, no, here's what happened in the election. Here's why it felt the way that it felt. Yeah. Here's how all these court cases played out. Right. But that takes time.

That's boring. And that doesn't fly across Twitter like, you know, Sidney Powell and Lynn Wood saying that Hugo Chavez hacked the election from the grave. And it's ridiculous thing ever. Yeah. It's so hard. I mean, I think, I hope they won't mind. my sharing this, but, you know, I watched the president's last State of the Union with my

in-laws, who are on the other side of Northern Ohio from your district. And they are very sharp, smart folks. They're engaged. They read the newspapers. They follow the news. They want to know what's going on. And we talked as we watched the State of the Union together. And, You just think, you know, if you don't swim in this environment, if it's not your job to pay attention to what's happened, like not just what's happening, but what's being said and is it true and what are the nuances of this claim and that claim, it's, it's, it's virtually, it's virtually possible to be able to make sense of some of the stuff. And I think you, you, you layer, look, politicians, this is not, Donald Trump is not the first politician who's misled voters. I mean, this, this, this happens. all the time. I think Barack Obama, yeah, I mean, I think Barack Obama did it far more often than he was held responsible for, would say things that are, that were demonstrably untrue. And, you know, in the kind of way that would stop the news cycle for two days when Donald Trump did it. And Barack Obama didn't get, I'm not, I'm not just to be clear, I'm not drawing an

equivalence. Donald Trump lied a lot more, I think Barack Obama did. But it's happened before. when you when you have it with the frequency that we saw during the Trump era, I do think it just became so hard for people to say, what is going on? I don't even know who to trust. And that, I think that became a huge, I mean, as you say, an epistemological crisis. Like, how do you know? Yeah, and you don't. And again, it's, to me, it's this perpetual escalation cycle. Fake news, Trump attacks the media. Then the media makes disingenuous attacks, some legitimate, attacks, but a lot of disingenuous attacks, okay? And then your average person is going, this is ridiculous. Like, I don't, I don't believe either of these people or either of these

entities. And that then plays out over more and more people. And so now you get in a world where nobody knows what to believe. And again, they go, they just default to, you know, somebody who shares their values. Yeah. And if shares your values means the guy on Facebook I've never met who might not even be a real person who's sending a bunch of garbage out there, we got a problem. And so I don't know how to solve it. But again, you know, when it's something like, I'm not going to say a small lie, right, all lies are bad, but like something like the crowd size at the inauguration, right? It's like, okay, all right, whatever. This is sort of juvenile, but okay, whatever. You sure you had a great crowd. All right, fine. Okay, not central

to democracy, an election, central to democracy. When you start going into that world, now we've got a real problem. And that, again, quickly we had a, well, I won't go into that. It's a private conversation. But what I will say is when you have a crisis of knowledge, when you have an epistemological crisis about something central to democracy, like an election, you've got major problems on your hands and that's that shouldn't be a right left issue because the people who stormed the capital who were wrong in every sense of the word they did it because

they legitimately believed that an election was stolen and that the only way to fix it was to storm the capital that's what they believed and they were shut down and they failed thank god okay but they didn't just go away. They're still out there. And so what do we do now, I think, is the question. So you have, I think, whatever percentage of Americans, some overwhelming percentage of Americans agree with what both of you guys are saying. But the issue is, like, what of it?

And I think that when we talk about the incentives right now, for instance, in Congress, and I'll use some of your colleagues, who are, you know, coming in as freshmen, but my God, we're seeing it not just from freshmen. One in particular decided he didn't need to hire constituent services staff or legislative staff because that's not what Congress does anymore. So he just hired all comm staff.

And so they're going to, you know, up his name ID. Upping name ID means it's easier to fundraise. Easier to fundraise means you can run either, you know, unopposed because you'll scare off opponents, or you can run for higher office even better. And then you can do nothing in that higher office. Whoopee. We can make fun of those people. We can say that, you know, the media shouldn't give them

attention, et cetera, et cetera. Frankly, it's just not going to happen as best I can tell. But what would absolutely change things is if Congress actually did legislation, which it hasn't truly done in, I don't know, a couple decades, really, it's abdicated its role, maybe more than that, ceding all this power to the executive branch and to the agencies and the administrative state, meaning that when people do have an election, they do think it's life and death. Because whoever wins that four-year term now controls all of the levers of power, not just one. Okay, I'm getting to my point here, which is you have this COVID relief package. That's something that Congress, that sort of core congressional duty.

Right? We have a pandemic going on, a national crisis. Surely Congress can do something about that, right? And yet, from everything that I see, it looks very likely that this won't be a bipartisan bill, that they'll use a process called reconciliation, which means that they will not need any Republican votes to pass this. The reason, I think it's a fewfold. You can blame Democrats if you want. I think there's plenty of blame to go around here. But you can also blame Republicans. for a total intransigence or willingness to make realistic compromises because they also just want to stop the Democrats from getting any wins. And that microcosm has played out over and over and over again on every major problem facing this country. You've only been in Congress for, you know, two years in a couple weeks here. So I'm not laying this all at your feet, but there's a- It's all your fault. But everything's my fault. No, I mean, I'm used to it. But two years and two weeks of it are. But that to me is a fundamental solution that I don't hear a lot of elected people talking about or wanting to talk about. And it's a lot

more fun or easy. You know, you talked about that intellect, that matrix of intellectually hard. It is intellectually hard to solve how to get Congress back to legislating again. And it's intellectually easy, I think, to point to the problems that have resulted from that. So, with your next two years, do you have any thoughts on how to fix that? So here, I'll say two things. Fix Congress. Yeah, I only have two years. So a couple things I'll say on that.

So with respect to the COVID relief bill, there are sincere disagreements. I mean, I will tell you, I'm in the Problem Solvers Caucus. 25 Republicans, 25 Democrats, I would argue, greased the skids on the last COVID-release deal. I will tell you, we're very, very far apart on what we think is reasonable, given where we are in the pandemic. And so you're right. The Democrats have said, well, you know, screw them. We're just going to go do it ourselves. A very disappointing thing to do after you just told the country you're here to unify. Separate point, because that won't unify anybody. I think that's exactly right. Truly.

I do want to underline that, that will lead to more of this problem, not less of it. That's what I'm saying. We are in a perpetual escalation cycle. And so how do you get out of that, right? That's the crux of your question. I'm going to give you a very simple answer that is very, very difficult to actually do. Okay. We need genuine leadership.

We need legitimate leadership. Like, leadership actually has to step up and lead. That's how the way. world works. The country didn't get to where it was because we were timid and weak. The country is where it is today, 200 plus years of the most successful democracy in human history, granted we've had some rough patches the last couple months, because at critical moments in our history, leaders are led. They stepped up. I'm very blessed to have been around some of the, it's football, I get it, but some of the best football leaders that the country's ever seen.

Tony Dungey's a Hall of Fame coach, my college coach is a Hall of Fame coach, my high school coach is a Hall of Fame coach. Played with Peyton Manning, is one of the best leaders I've ever seen. I've been around just by happenstance, some phenomenal leaders. And I will tell you, this town isn't within shouting distance of what is required from a leadership standpoint. It just doesn't exist here. And that's not a party comment.

You're a U.S. congressman. do something about it. I'm trying. I'm doing what I think is right. I'm trying to do my part on that. And again, I'm I'm as frustrated as everybody out there on this. Can I ask this question? What are those, what are the people who are ostensible leaders, putative leaders, or leaders by title? What are they doing instead? They're not, I agree with the, I agree with you entirely agree your assessment entirely. They're not leading. We have had this vacuum of leadership. And I agree with you that it's been bipartisan. Is it just that they are feeding this perpetual outrage machine so that they can raise money and they can keep their jobs? They can accumulate more. I mean, it's not even really

about accumulating power at this point. In many cases, it's just accumulating, I don't know, years in a chair? Well, yeah. The incentive structure is completely broken. We've established that, right? I think we've correctly assessed what the effect of social media and a breakdown of media and a collapse of information, what it creates, and people are responding to the incentives that are in place.

And again, I'll go back to what I said early on, which is I love this job more than any job I've ever had. It's the honor of my life. But we all take an oath. And sometimes that means something to people and sometimes it doesn't. And the hope is, especially for our side, right, is the side that is sworn to protect the Constitution and adheres to it, that we take that seriously. And that the Constitution is not just something that we put in our back pocket when we have a tough vote that we don't want to make. And then we take out and swing at people when it suits our needs. That can't be how this works. But way too often, that's how it feels. And so to your point, yes, I am I a member of Congress. And I think about the question every day. What am I doing enough? Am I doing enough?

What am I doing? And the answer is clearly no. The answer is clearly no. But the fight is always worth it. This country's worth it. And as long as I'm blessed to have this job, I'm going to do what I think is best for my community and the country. And, you know, we'll see where it all goes. With Amex Platinum, access to exclusive Amex pre-sale tickets can score you a spot track side. So being a fan for life turns into the trip of a lifetime. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Pre-sale tickets for future events subject to availability and varied by race. Turns and conditions apply. Learn more at mx.ca slash YNX.

I want to talk a little football before we go. But before we get to the fun questions, I absolutely want your Super Bowl predictions as the actual expert on this podcast. Steve and I talk football, but now this is going to be embarrassing to have someone who really knows this stuff. But before we get to that,

I do have actually a serious question about your football career because we have young people who listen to this podcast and certainly in my career, there have been times where things weren't going well, and I didn't know how that was all going to play out, where things were going to end up. And when I look at your football career,

things were just going up and up and up and up and awesome and up. And you got injured. You came back, you got injured again. Basically, things started going down and down and down. And I have to think this was like your dream at the time, surely, to play NFL ball. And that dream was slipping away and you didn't quit. You did not give up.

You kept sort of fighting through it until it was just untenable. And I'm wondering if you would tell us a little bit about what that felt like, how you pushed through that moment. And then not even that many years later, you are a U.S. congressman. Did you, in some of those darker moments as you're in physical pain trying to, rehab and stuff. Did you think, like, look, if this doesn't work out, it's going to be okay? Because I'm going to, I'm going to run for Congress?

Or did you think, is it, if this doesn't work out, things can be a lot worse. I'm going to run for Congress. So one of my good friends jokes with me, he says, you have a way of picking horrible industries. So anyway, you know, good question. I'll, nobody's really asked me this publicly, but I'll just tell you. So a couple things. One, my career was basically I had two years where I was healthy in the NFL and then three

consecutive years where I was injured. And I was a first round pick. And if you're a first round pick, there's a lot of internal and external pressure on you to perform at a particular level. And so when I look back on my career, I'm incredibly disappointed for how it turned out because I feel like I let the team down and I let the city down, the city of Indianapolis.

So how'd you get through that? I'll say this. Not well for a period of time. I mean, you know, when I was injured, the first year I got injured, we just let Marvin Harrison go, Hall of Fame wide receiver. We just let Marvin Harrison go.

Tony Dungey came to me and said, or as Jim Caldwell, came to me and said, now it's your turn. You need to take that spot. Well, if you are going to be Peyton Manning's split or right-hand receiver. You're probably going to have a pretty good time and catch a lot of balls and make a lot of money.

I got injured, I think, on the fourth play of the season and never made it back. The team went to the Super Bowl. The following year, I fought back and got injured in the first game again. And the guy who took my spot, Pierre Garcon, who's a great guy and a great player, went on, had a nice career.

And during those three years, I mean, honestly, I battled depression. I had all kinds of issues that I was trying to fight through. I handled it okay, but not great. And when my career ended, there was this period of time where I just didn't know who I was anymore. I mean, you just feel like you don't have friends. You don't know what you're going to do. You feel like your whole ego is tied up in this game and your self-confidence and self-worth. And I had already gotten into business school.

I was going to go to Stanford, but I didn't know anybody out there, and I'd never met anybody who went to that school. And so I don't know what was going to happen. But, you know, eventually, you sort of what I think I figured out is you just keep moving and you keep plotting along and you realize the world didn't end and your friends still do actually like you, most of them anyway. And then, and you try something else. And, you know, the same thing in politics, where, you know, I moved on from a business career. I got into this. And I'll say this, if I didn't have my NFL career, I don't think I could handle the stresses of this job. Because the scrutiny in the NFL is similar to the scrutiny here, especially when you're not

playing well. And also the fact that I've already lost a career that I loved that I spent my whole life trying to get. And it turned out okay. And so, you know, right or wrong, that puts me in a position where I sort of trust myself to figure it out. If I can't recover from this politically, which time will tell, I will be at peace with that knowing that I did this the right way, or the way that I believe is right. Everybody can have a different opinion on that. But the way that in my heart, I believe, is correct that I can tell my kids about someday and be proud of. And if it doesn't work, I don't know what the heck I'm going to do. I haven't spent one second thinking about it.

But the NFL career gives me confidence to say, I hope I'll be able to figure something out. Well, I think a lot of folks go through some version of that. They don't go through it publicly like you did. And of all the things that you've accomplished, including right now, being a great congressman for Ohio, I just want to tell you that I find that part of your story to be the most inspiring because that's something that I think everyone needs to hear more about because we've all been there where you're pursuing a dream and and you've worked so hard, so hard for it and to have it not work out and to know that there

is more coming, there's stuff after it and not just consolation. There's actually great stuff and your family that you love and cherish now and this job, which kind of sucks, but like there'll be something after this too. Well, I want to keep this thing, by the way. I say that, like, you know, if I have to move down, I'm going on. I don't want to move on. Yeah, yeah. But, yeah, but, yeah, no, I, I appreciate you saying that.

Now, Steve's Packers and my husband's Packers, I'm Packers by Marriage, lost in a tragic, tragic game there. So Steve, I'm going to hand. over the Super Bowl predictions to you just because I'm going to find it entertaining to watch you have to talk about a Super Bowl where the Packers got so close to being in it. Well, this isn't the first time I've had to have these discussions. The Packers have lost in the NFC Championship several times in recent years. Although I did, one of the best moments of my life was going with my dad to the Super Bowl if the Packers did win against the Steelers.

And being in the end zone, Aaron Rogers, through this past that Greg Jen, It was like through the tiniest of windows and some replay that's been shown a hundred times that I've seen and I was right where the ball was coming. So it was like the perfect vantage point on the perfect play, the perfect game. And I somehow talked my way into the Packers post game party where they were they had Kid Rock playing that he was the surprise guest and I was looking around talking to all these these Packers fans. I have a friend who helped me out, help me get in. It was, you know, one of the best things I've done in ages.

It's hard to talk about that game last week. I didn't understand the decision not to try on fourth down from the eight-yard line with the NFL MVP. And I love Matt. I say that. I'm a fan of Matt LaFleur. His offensive play calling is masterful. The number of times we had touchdowns where it looked like the defense didn't even know it was going on, you know, double digits, a couple dozen of those. Okay, enough enough from me about football.

Who you got? Who you like in the Super Bowl? So I'm definitely rooting for the bucks. My receiver coach in Indy is Tom Brady's quarterback coach. and it's one of the greatest human beings I've ever met my life. His name's Clyde Christensen. The LA Times just wrote a great story on him. I just tweeted it if you want to read it.

It's a great story, and he's an amazing guy. So I am rooting for the bucks. I don't know if they could pull it off. Pat Mahomes is pretty darn good. Travis Kelsey's a monster, and their defense is solid. I mean, it's, unfortunately, if I had to, if you force me to make a pick, I think the Chiefs win by about two possessions, probably 10. Wow.

That's my guess. A Super Bowl blood. It's funny. I mean, the Chiefs don't really, they don't need, they don't have much of a running game, and they haven't needed much of a running game. I know. It cuts against what I know about football or what I think I know about football, which is like, and this is a trestle thing, a Jim trestle thing.

you win by basically winning three areas the turnover margin you win in the trenches and special teams like if you get those three things down right you're probably going to win and the chiefs just don't run it they just throw it off over the joint and normally that means you turn the ball over but it doesn't happen with them because patent homes is a magician and um i'll i'll say it's one point so i was talking to my former quarterback patent manning about him at one point and I just said, man, Pat Mahomes, like, he plays the game differently than anybody I've ever seen with these no-look passes and sidearms and all that. And Peyton, who knows a lot more about football than I certainly do, he said, guns,

I don't know how you make those throws. I just don't know how you make them. I mean, just almost physically in awe of some of the things Mahomes is doing. So that tells you something. Comes from a voice of authority for sure. Yeah. Though, you know, he is playing Tom Brady. and again, I will be rooting passionately for the Bucks

because of Clyde Christensen and Tom Moore, who's my offensive coordinator, he's there as well. So I'm hoping for a Bucks win, but unfortunately I'm not seeing it right now. The bigger the competition, something special happens in Tom Brady's person. There is some chemical that the rest of us maybe don't even have that just turns on when the lights are really, really on,

which has been sort of this treadmill, no doubt, for Brady, where, like, what those lights have to be has changed, but there's no brighter lights than the Super Bowl. So I don't know. Yeah, you know, it's so funny you say that. So I always, as I said, I love this job more than anything I've ever done, and it's the greatest honor outside of Mary and my wife. The only other job that has similar thrills is football

because it's pretty fun to wake up every day thinking about winning Super Bowls. Like if all you think about every day when you wake up is, what am I doing to win the Super Bowl? That's pretty cool. The only thing I found better is, what am I doing to make this country better? What am I doing to kick China's buck? What am I doing to make my community better? That's the only thing I found from a professional standpoint that charges you up the same way.

Because this is a special country. All right. Last question. What is your go-to Super Bowl snack for this Super Bowl? What will you be eating? Oh, my goodness. Good question. I'll be drinking something brown.

And I will be, I'll probably do a nice, I'm going to do a nice New York strip on the grill. It's not going to be a snack. It's, it's going to be a good, solid piece of red meat with some potatoes and, you know, whatever else we got in the fridge. But, yeah, that's my plan. Mine's pig. What time do you want to be over? Yeah.

Steve, what are you going with? Well, I was going to just say nachos or wings, but that seems like, inadequate after after that no i will be one 100% chance i will be doing eating a lot of wings i mean i do that almost every time i watch football which is why i look the way i look a lot of chickens die that first weekend in february yeah well you know what it might end up getting me the the vaccine in maryland a little early because i've pushed past the bMI threshold for obese so you know everybody who's scolded me for eating too many wings in the past, I can point to that. Jokes on them.

Might actually get me the vaccine early. Well, Congressman, thank you so much for joining us, for giving us so much of your time. We appreciate that and we appreciate your service. Now, go make our country better every day. Thank you. Thank you for having me. It is an honor. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace.

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