The Joe Rogan Experience - #1170 - Tulsi Gabbard

Episode Date: September 10, 2018

Tulsi Gabbard is an American politician of the Democratic Party serving as the U.S. Representative for Hawaii's 2nd congressional district since 2013.

Five, four, three, two, one. Boom, and we're live. Hawaii in the house. Aloha. Good to see you. Nice to see you. Thanks for doing this. Thanks for having me.

What a great place to be a congressperson. The best. You're in paradise. Yeah, it's hard to leave to go to Washington, I tell you what. That's one place, if it wasn't for the storms and the fact that it's really a volcano. Yeah. As we've seen all too evident just recently. Yeah.

I have a friend who goes to the Big Island every year for Thanksgiving. He convinced me to go two years in a row. It was awesome. I loved it. But then this year I'm like, I don't know, bro. It seems like it's shooting rocks into the sky and half of it's on fire. Yeah. That's been, so that's my district.

My district in Hawaii covers basically the whole state except for the densely populated urban corridor of Honolulu. Oh, so you're lucky. Yeah. You cover everything except the problem spot. The city. The city. So, no, it's been tough. It's been a tough year because of those folks in the District of Puna with the volcano.

Yeah. We have gone through a few near misses with hurricanes, some big flooding on Kauai, and now we've got another one that's knocking on our door. Yeah. You guys just – what was it, a level four just passed? It was five. They were expecting it to be kind of the same intensity that Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands saw. kind of the same intensity that Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands saw. So we were really encouraging everyone to get prepared, getting prepared ourselves,

boarding up all the doors and windows. And then, thank God, it turned into a tropical storm at the end and had a lot of rain. We still had some flooding, but compared to what it could have been, we were fortunate. And then on top of that, you guys had a false alarm where a text went out to everybody in the island saying that a nuclear missile was headed your way and this was not a drill. What the hell happened there? On top of all that, my gosh. I was in Washington when that happened. It was a Saturday afternoon-ish in D.C. time, early morning in Hawaii. afternoon-ish in DC time, you know, early morning in Hawaii. And somebody from Hawaii sent me a screen capture of that alert that went out to over a million cell phones across our state

saying, you know, ballistic missile headed towards Hawaii. Seek cover. This is not a drill. Wow. Yeah. What does that feel like? I mean, until you find out that it's not, how long did it take before you found out that it wasn't real? So I immediately started thinking, I mean, so many things running through my head. I'm thinking about my parents, my husband, my family, everybody's in Hawaii. Start thinking about what's going on in the state. Is this real? Is it not real? So that was kind of the first thing like I kicked into gear like, okay, let's make sure this is legitimate. The actual threat from North Korea is a very real one. So it could very well be. It was not obvious that this was just a mistake that people should blow off. And that was what I think most of the people in the state understood as they

started thinking through what do we do with the last minutes of our lives. So I called, the first person I called was our state adjutant general, who's also the head of our civil defense and the National Guard, and called his cell phone. Thank God he answered the phone. And I said, I got this message, what's going on? And he said, it's a false alarm. It was sent out as a mistake. I said, okay, I'm going to blast that out. So I got on Twitter and I put that out just saying, hey, this is not accurate. I forget exactly what I said, but basically this is a false alarm. And then just started getting on the phone, making as many calls as I possibly could.

But as I was doing that, I was getting text messages and emails and things from people who were freaking out. How far is Korea from Hawaii? It's over 4,000 miles. But that's not very far. It's for an intercontinental ballistic missile. And knowing progressively, just over the six years that I've been in Congress, and this was a major issue that I've been bringing up since I've been there in just raising the alarm bells that North Korea is increasing their capacity and their ballistic missile capabilities that put Hawaii closer and closer than reach Hawaii and Alaska, particularly. and closer than reach Hawaii and Alaska, particularly. And that's why, you know, and after people started getting the word that this was a false alarm, I started hearing from folks who just shared their stories of what they went through. And, you know, on the news they showed the guy who was lowering his daughter

down a manhole on the side of the street, his little girl. Oh, God. I heard from another guy who said that you know i had one kid in town in honolulu and another kid in waianae over an hour drive and he literally sat there thinking how am i going to choose which child i'm going to go and spend the last minutes of my life with because you're either driving in one direction or the other there's so many so many stories of how did it happen guy pushed clicked on the wrong uh on the wrong alert message on his computer screen ultimately what happened uh the one that said this is a drill

did he have like no glasses on or something? There's so many theories and his story has changed a few times. And of course he's the subject of major investigations. And then after a while he got fired, he's actually suing saying he was wrongfully terminated and all this stuff going on. And if ever there was something you could be fired for, how could you be wrongfully terminated for that mistake? Yeah, that's my question.

Understand the magnitude of your decision. I mean, that is a giant fuck up. Yeah. Oh, my God. But it, you know, I think it really woke people up. There were clear vulnerabilities in our state alert system that would even allow this, like, allow one person to have that power to do that is not, it's obviously not good. And so there are things that we're working to do just to strengthen our civil defense alert system, but also just to bring attention to North Korea and make it so that

people aren't living under this threat of possibility that that could be a real thing. And that alarm could come through your phone and know that you now have around 18 minutes to find good cover or say your final goodbyes. Well, it's so scary because it's such an erratic and dangerous regime. I mean, when you see what that guy has already done and the people he's executed, including family members. And the people he's executed, including family members. Yeah. I mean, he's quite a maniac and a legitimate dictator in the old world kind of sense. It's very strange that he's still, I mean, you would think in the age that we live in, that would be very difficult to control an entire country the way that they've controlled North Korea for so long.

Yeah. Since the Korean War, but they still can do it. They are, and I think that while it may be easy to write him off as a maniac, there has also been a very consistent, there has been a consistency throughout the different regimes of the Kim family as they've developed this nuclear and nuclear missile capability in that they are doing it to protect themselves against regime change war, essentially.

And they have said it directly. Our U.S. foreign policy experts point that out, that this is the reason why they're developing this capability because they have seen how, if you look at Libya, for example, when Gaddafi was looking at, you know, building and acquiring nuclear weapons, he was doing so also as, you know, to protect himself and his regime. And then he made a deal with the United States saying, okay, give up your nuclear weapons program. And we're not going to, you know, don't worry about it. We're not going to touch you. And then, of course, we know what happened.

The U.S. led this regime change war, toppled Gaddafi, and North Korea says, okay, so that's what you do when you have, you know, a leader of a country without nuclear weapons to protect themselves. Well, it's also the consequences of that regime change is a failed state. And it's more terrifying than even when Gaddafi was in control. I mean, I'm sure you've seen the slave trade videos from there. It's horrifying. It's insane. It is horrifying that this is happening.

That you're watching it on YouTube. Yeah. Right. In our lifetime. Yeah. And that this failed state has happened as a direct result of our policy, that our failed continuation of these regime change wars that we carry out in different parts of the world. Right. It's almost like we don't learn from our mistakes. And I don't

know what the proper solution is. I mean, do you keep someone like Saddam Hussein or someone like Muammar Gaddafi, do you keep them in power and let them still be horrific dictators and evil maniacs? Or do you step in and cause more damage? I mean, it's almost a lose-lose situation. Yeah, it's not a good situation, but it's where we as the United States need to be pragmatic about the situation and the fact that we live in the world that exists, not some kind of idealistic world that is a fantasy. And then think about how counterproductive our acting as the world's police has been, has proven to be in example after example after example. So yes, there are bad people in the world who do horrifying things. But is it really in our place to go in and take action and say,

OK, we're going to remove this person and then we're going to put this person in and this is how you're going to govern this country and really acting as the world's police. And then as a result, as we've seen in Iraq and Libya and now in Syria, the people in those countries are far worse off than they were before. And it's counterproductive for our interests as well, because we have al-Qaeda, ISIS, and these other terrorist groups who have been strengthened directly as a result of our policies in these countries. When you talk to people in the intelligence community, what do they think?

I mean, either off the record or on the record, what do they think is the solution for situations like that? Many of them are hesitant to share their own opinion because especially in the intelligence community, their job is to report on what they're hearing, what they're gathering, the intel that they're bringing in, and so on and so forth. But when you talk with folks who operate in that space, the ones who are honest

and not trying to further a specific agenda or cover somebody else's bad decisions, there is a recognition of how our policies of the past decades have failed people in those countries and us. They've failed, but have they failed as bad or equally bad as if we did nothing? Worse. Worse, for sure? Yes. Yeah? Yes.

Worse for the people in those countries. So why do we keep doing that? Worse for the people in those countries as well as we should be thinking about before we take any of these actions is how does this best serve the interests of our people in this country and these actions have been counter to those best interests and so your question about so why do we keep doing this um i think there are a lot of different things that go into that and to drive that you know you have the military industrial complex that benefits and makes a lot of money off of our being in a perpetual state of war. You have a lot of other countries, like Saudi Arabia, for example, who dump a lot of money into the United States and kind of try to use our U.S. military as their force to go in and do certain things in the Middle East that's more beneficial to Saudi Arabia. We see this happening in Yemen right now. Yet another example, interventionist war jumping in there. We're supporting Saudi Arabia and their coalition

in this war that's created the worst humanitarian disaster in the world. They just bombed a school bus and killed 40 kids a couple of weeks ago in Yemen world. They just bombed a school bus and killed 40 kids a couple of weeks ago in Yemen. Yemeni civilians bombed weddings in Yemen. And yet, our U.S. government is not saying, hey, we're going to stop and yank all of our support for Saudi Arabia. They're continuing to do it. Now, you're a veteran. As a veteran, I mean, you've served our country. You've put yourself in harm's way. You were a part of the military. There's so many people that are making these decisions that have not done that. Do you think that's part of the problem? Yes. And that was one of the main reasons that I ran for Congress in the first

place. Having come back from my own deployments to the Middle East at the Hawaii Army National Guard, experiencing and seeing firsthand the cost of war, both on our troops, on our friends who didn't make that trip home with us, as well as on the people, the people in these countries where we were. And I came back and saw just the cavalier attitude that a lot of politicians take to making these decisions. And I worked in a medical unit in my deployment to Iraq. I worked in a medical unit in my deployment to Iraq. We were in a base about 40 miles north of Baghdad. And our base where we were was nicknamed Mortarit list of all of the American injuries and casualties that had happened the day before to try to see if there were any of our close to 3,000 Hawaii soldiers who had been hurt.

And to then make sure that they were getting the care they needed either in country or get them evacuated as quickly as possible. the care they needed either in country or get them evacuated as quickly as possible. And just going through that list name by name every day, whether there were people on there who I knew personally or people who I would never meet, and knowing about the family members and the loved ones, moms, dads, kids at home who were stressed out every day, fearing getting that phone call that their loved one had been hurt or worse, killed in action. And I wondered then, you know, how many of these politicians who make these votes and who make these decisions actually think about this or who lose sleep on this. Do you think a solution to that would be mandatory military service for people who are in those positions? I don't. You don't? No. What do you think the solution is? Because as a soldier,

I don't, you know, I don't want somebody in my foxhole who doesn't want to be there, first of all. I think it's, you know, having an all-volunteer force, which we have, First of all, I think it's, you know, having an all-volunteer force, which we have, is a positive thing. I think that the American people need to impress upon their leaders the importance of taking these decisions very seriously. That if they want to represent the American people and make these decisions for our troops and for our country. They need to understand who pays that price for the cost of war. And yes, it is every single one of our service members, both those who pay the ultimate price as well as those who come home with both visible and invisible wounds. And who will continue paying that price for a very long time to come. But also, every one of our communities filled with people who may not have worn the uniform, but who've had trillions of dollars taken out of their wallet to pay for these counterproductive

interventionist wars. As we, in Hawaii, for example, struggle to put air conditioners in schools where kids are trying to study in over 100 degree heat. As we deal with massive infrastructure problems, people in Michigan, they just shut down the water system in a bunch of schools in Detroit because they have lead and poison in the water for the kids. So the kids are not able to use the water fountains at school. So we have major infrastructure, major challenges and issues. And so making sure that leaders are held accountable for the decisions that they're making is ultimately what needs to happen. One of the things I like about you and one of the things I've liked about a lot of your interviews is you're an obvious, genuine person. Like if you're not genuine, I'd be very shocked.

That's very rare. So when you're talking about these politicians and having these people being held accountable, it's a real problem, but one of the problems with politics and one of the problems with public speaking and being charismatic is a lot of these people are just really good at being full of shit. And because they're really good at being full of shit,

a lot of slack-jawed dum-dums out there buy into it, hook, line, and sinker, wave that flag and kiss those babies, and they vote these dummies into office. And this happens time and time again. So saying these people need to be aware of the consequences or they need to be held accountable, I firmly believe there's more sociopaths than we really think. I really do. I think if you look at the general consensus as something like, what is it? One out of a hundred or something like that? What do they think it is?

Maybe more? I think it might be 10%. I think there's a lot of people that get through life doing things and getting away with things and not doing things that are going to cause them either danger or social consequences, but they manage to get through life with a song and a dance, but they're not genuine.

I think this is a giant problem with people that want to be in a position of power in the first place. Yes. Why does a guy like Donald Trump want to be the fucking president when you have billions of dollars in the bank? What are you doing? Why are you doing that? There's a weird motivation that a lot of these people have.

And that motivation is to be the Uber, to be the king, to be the top of the heap, to be the queen, whatever it is. I don't know how you change that in those people. I don't think making them aware of the consequences of their decisions is going to work. It's just the type of people who they are in the first place. I don't, yeah, I think you're not wrong. However, I've just seen over the last few years, the level of awareness amongst people, amongst voters has been increasing as there are more and more kind of non-mainstream media outlets that are shining light on these kinds of issues. When you say non-mainstream, do you think that

mainstream have been holding back? I think that you only get a certain narrative. Right. And it depends and it changes based on what channel you flick to or whatever because if you vary in that narrative then you get less access uh yeah i guess you could say that you get less access to the people that you want to have on those shows because that's how you get your ratings in the first place yeah yeah i mean and that's that's the problem with these with a lot of these news channels is it is driven by ratings and if you're bringing in differing viewpoints and differing perspectives um i don't know maybe it affects their ratings i don't know i don't pay too much attention to that but i do know that when you look at uh you know guys like

jimmy door for example yes you know jimmy door talks about a lot of things that you'll never hear if you flick on the tv, on the cable news channels, and has very interesting conversations. And again, bringing facts and different things to life that people don't otherwise feel like they have access to. Well, there's way more of that today than there ever has been before. And that's where I see there's opportunity. And because the more people are learning, like, holy crap, this is what you're doing. This is the consequences of those decisions because there's a ton of votes that happen every single day in Congress that most people don't know about unless you're really following it closely yourself.

Just that that in and of itself is a job that that, you know, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, they're not covering. news they're not covering. So really a lot of kind of these alternative sites and voices are coming through that are helping to inform and educate people. Yeah, the idea of trying to educate politicians on the consequences and what that really means and the cavalier attitude that you were talking about, like what's a worst example that like when you when you're talking about cavalier behavior by these people that make these decisions like what kind of things have you seen um well i'll speak to something that happened most recently i think there are probably a number of examples but but just a couple of months ago in the big defense authorization bill that is kind of one of the only must-pass pieces of legislation in Congress every year, there was a three-page provision that was kind of put in there without really any debate in

the committee or anything like that, that would essentially authorize the United States to go to war with Iran. Now, you would think something like that, with that magnitude, would be kind of a big deal. You would want to have hearings, you would want to have a question on strategy, objectives, costs, like all of these different things. That didn't happen. So when this bill came to the floor of the House, where all 435 members of Congress have the ability to vote yes or no, I just put in an amendment that would have deleted those three pages from this big thousands page bill. said that Congress is authorizing the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense to create and implement a strategy to counter Iran. Not just come and, hey, bring us your strategy and let us talk about it and see whether or not we agree and approve. It was giving the power to the Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense to create and implement a strategy to counter Iran.

Extremely dangerous and a blank check to essentially start a brand new war that currently has not been declared. I introduced this amendment. I don't know if you want to take a guess on how many people voted for it. How many? 60. 60. 60. Why wouldn't they? Exactly.

Why would they want that blank check? There are some people who legitimately do want us to go to war with Iran. Well, who are those people? You don't have to name names. There are, I would say it's a bipartisan feeling. And why do they want that? Because Iran, they feel that Iran is a threat to both the United States and Israel. And Iran is and has been for a long time, they feel, a menace, I guess, essentially.

And our enemy. a menace, I guess, essentially, and our enemy, even though Congress has not declared war, even though, you know, we, our country just signed a nuclear deal to make it so that they can't build a nuclear weapon. It's, it's, it gets to a point where it seems like hysteria. But again, it's not based on an actual thinking through tactically and strategically and responsibly what we're actually doing and what our policy is. Are you one of the younger people in Congress? Yeah, you could say that. There's a handful of us who are under 40. Not many, small handful. And is that, I mean, you're a person person who what are you like 37 you you're not allowed to ask ladies usually but you're congresswoman politicians are an exception i guess everything

has to be on the table we have to be a certain age to run for office so you know right well how would you have to be to be president um 35 oh so you could get in there. Yeah. Have you thought about it? Uh, you know, a lot of people, a lot of people have been, um, especially with everything that's going on, I've been kind of urging me to, um, to consider it. Yeah. Um, you know, I'm folk, I'm focused on home. I'm focused on Hawaii. Right. Um, want to do my very best to be able to serve them and our country.

And, um And yeah. It seems like it's too much work, too. It's a lot. It seems like too much. It's a lot. It ages the shit out of people. It just does. Those morph pictures are always interesting to see.

George Bush is one of the weirdest ones. It's like, whoa. And Obama. Obama's a rough one, too. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it just does. All right. There's no getting away from that.

And if it doesn't, then they should probably arrest you. Well, then you're probably not doing your job. Probably a monster. Keep it a close eye on Trump. A secret sauce somewhere. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you're in a crazy business.

But I think to that point, just talking about how few younger members of Congress there are. One of the things that I did when I first got elected is I started something called the Future Caucus, and it was a bipartisan kind of millennial-focused caucus saying that we as a generation recognize the need to work together to drop all the partisan, hyper-partisan crap that is tearing this country apart and focus on solutions and

actually solving problems. And so, you know, different people have come and gone in Congress, but I think what's exciting now is that there is a lot more energy, interest, and activity, I think, from young people in this country who may fall in different places on ideological spectrum of politics, but recognize that, you know, there's no reason why I should give my voice to someone from another generation who has no idea what our challenges are, or the challenges that we will face from the decisions they made and left behind. When I see someone like Jeff Sessions, and then I see someone like you, obviously, you're you. Obviously you're in different realms of the ideological spectrum, but there's a big difference between someone who formed their view of the world while the internet was active. And that's you versus this crazy old asshole who

thinks that people smoke marijuana are bad people. I mean, it's a weird thing when you see some of these old guard. They're a relic of the past, but yet they're still in a position of power and control. And they're making these decisions based on this old world that really doesn't exist anymore. Yeah. And there's so many different ways that that actually has a very real impact. And there's so many different ways that that actually has a very real impact. And I think some of the hearings that we've seen most recently dealing with Facebook and Twitter and Google are a perfect example where you have people asking questions and it becomes very obvious quickly. Yes. They don't know how to log into Facebook.

Right. They've never sent a tweet in their lives. Some of these people are very proud that they either don't have a cell phone or they still have a flip phone, which is fine if that's your personal decision. That's fine. But if you're the regulatory body that should be exercising oversight over how technology is rapidly changing the world that we live in, you got to know something about it or surround yourself with people who do. Well, especially when it pertains to selling people's privacy or using people's data to influence elections and using, you know, the stuff that's been happening with Facebook

is even more strange because I don't know how you stop. strange because I don't know how you stop. Like there was a fantastic NPR podcast about these Russian troll farms, about their jobs. People show up for work and their job is to spread misinformation and propaganda, you know, about whatever the subject is, whatever ideological point they're trying to push through. But they're trying to influence the way people look at things, and they're targeting people's comment sections and news feeds and Twitter feeds, and they're trying to do something that injects ideas into people's minds and sways their perception and their point of view. And it's very strange when you think that a foreign country is doing this and that people from a foreign country, that this is actually a job. So there

must be some sort of a reason for this. And then when you see those people that are questioning, what's his name? Facebook guy. Zuckerberg. Jeff Zuckerberg. Not Jeff Zuckerberg. Mark Zuckerberg. Jeff Zuckerberg is the guy who runs NBC, CBS, right? But NBC, no, is it? Yeah. I think it's NBC. No, CNN now. Jeff Zucker.

Jeff Zucker. Oh, Zucker. That's CNN. There you go. Anyone with the name Zuck, what a strange name. But Zuckerberg's, you know, he was so guarded in that as well that I almost wanted to go, hey, stop. This is not you, man.

Where's the real you? This is weird. The way you're sipping water and just the way you're talking to people is so odd. The formality of it all. Yeah. Some of my friends on that committee who actually are under 40 years old, who are members of Congress and who prepared and went in and were asking some tough questions, were very frustrated just because they didn't feel like they were getting, they were actually getting many answers, first of all, a lot of kind of legally speaking in circles and that kind of thing. And I think when you're talking about, and there's so many, I don't know,

I'm kind of going in a few different directions here with with uh these social media giants how they're being misused um to further certain agendas in different ways but when you're talking about like these russian troll farms that you're um that you mentioned what is missing from all of the news coverage around this and all of the outrage about how this foreign country is trying to influence our elections, which is wrong and which the American people need to be aware of where this information is coming from, is the fact that we, and you're saying, why does somebody do that? Well, because this country does want to influence who we're electing, right? Yes. We'd rather work with this person.

We know that person is not going to be nice to us. The United States has been doing this for a very long time. Sure. In countries around the world, both overtly and covertly, through these kinds of disinformation campaigns, not even counting the outright regime change wars, we're going to physically take you out. And I think it is very hypocritical for us to be discussing this issue as a country without actually being honest about how this goes both ways.

So, yes, we need to stop these other foreign countries. And Russia is not the only one. There are others from trying to influence the American people in our elections. We also need to stop doing the same thing in other countries. to achieve? Like, why do they want someone like Donald Trump in office versus someone like Hillary Clinton? Like, what is to be gained? And how much, you know, I mean, how much do they benefit from that? This is what's really one of the big questions that's going on right now. With all the Russian hearings and the Mueller investigation and trying to get to the bottom of all this and why they did what they did and what they did. And there's many people that are blowing this off and they don't think that it's important. And, you know, the president's claiming it's a witch hunt. But it's very odd that we're having this conversation in

the first place. It's never existed before in any single presidential election. There's never been talk of us or any politician that's running for president being influenced by a foreign superpower before today. It's just amazing that it took until 2016 before this became a real issue. That's true. That's true. I mean, there's talk about Hillary and uranium and all kinds of other different issues. And, you know, I mean, I'm not a giant Hillary Clinton fan. And one of the reasons why I'm not is I just I think she's a politician, you know, and I just I think she's a politician you know and I don't think she's a genuine person I just don't I think you get to a level of lying and the way they

conduct themselves and the way they've been doing it for so long that they don't even think it's a bad thing it's just a thing you do but one of the weirder ones that I ever saw from her was after the Libya uh after Gaddafi was killed where she was not on the record but she was still being recorded they were talking to her you know what i'm talking about i do where she said we came we saw what was it we came we we saw him he died what was the exact i don't remember the exact quote yeah we came we, and he's dead or something like that. Yeah. And she was laughing. Like literally laughing. But this is exactly what I'm talking about, about that cavalier attitude within Washington. And for me, that was really the main reason why in 2016, I was a vice chair of the Democratic National Party. As an officer of the party, you're supposed to stay neutral in these Democratic primaries. But it got to a point where I felt I stepped down from that position, resigned as vice chair to endorse Bernie Sanders,

largely because of the huge difference in their worldviews with Hillary Clinton's very hawkish interventionist foreign policy and track record. Libya is a very prominent and recent example. Iraq is another and Bernie Sanders, who generally takes a more non-interventionist worldview. That was an issue again, like as we're talking about, people weren't really raising the differences or saying, oh, she was Secretary of State, so she's great on foreign policy, but not actually looking at what is the actual policy. Right. And what kind of judgment would either of these individuals have when they're serving in that most important job of commander in chief? And that was a very key difference. And that was something I talked about a lot as I campaigned with Bernie around the country.

And that was something that I saw and heard from people in big cities, small towns, Midwest, North, South, East, West, people who appreciated just being told the truth. well there was also the uh the speeches that she gave where she wouldn't give up the transcripts for those gigantic paid speeches that she gave in front of bankers wall street yeah which is crazy that that's legal i mean that is essentially look there is no way she is so entertainment entertaining i mean we're not talking about a jay-z concert or kevin hart isn't doing stand-up they paid her a quarter million dollars to talk for an hour like that's not real okay they're not talking about a Jay-Z concert or Kevin Hart isn't doing stand-up. They paid her a quarter million dollars to talk for an hour. That's not real. They're not really paying you a quarter million dollars because you're so awesome. They really want you to talk for an hour.

This is some sort of a bribe. This is some sort of a deal. You're making a business arrangement. There's no question about it. There is no way that it's that valuable. It's just not. Her talking for an hour. What a hot ticket. Jesus, how do I get a hold of that ticket? I mean, that is crazy. The fact that someone could play that off as if this is a legitimate business transaction. That's nonsense.

And there's a direct correlation there, though, with Wall Street big money in general, as you're talking about that influence on politics i was talking with a guy who's what he calls of a recovering kind of finance guy from wall street who's left and has now come here to la and um and and he talked directly about that and we were talking about how even after 2008 all the too big to fail banks they were bailed out and people are suffering, they're losing their homes, their pensions and all of this stuff. These banks are bigger today than they were back then. And over time, and even over the last few

years, Congress has slowly and this is not just Republicans, there are Democrats who are on the take two or taking this Wall Street money. And you're starting to see these bills pass, peeling away the very small amount of regulations that were put on after that crash to get us back to an even worse situation than we were back in 2001. Why? How could we allow this to happen? There's a ton of money that's coming from Wall Street and funding politicians, campaigns, lobbyists who are there helping to write the legislation or kill the bad bills. And again, who's talking about this? No one. Right.

Very few people. How do you stop that, though? How do you stop the funding their campaigns, A, and then the paid speeches, B? Those two things alone, if you could just cut that out and say, no, no, no, you have to be legitimate. I mean, love or hate Bernie Sanders. You've got to respect the fact that guy never took any money from anybody. That's right. And he said, I'll give you all my transcripts because I don't have any. I didn't get paid to do any speeches. Yeah. And he's clean. Yeah. I mean, this is the reason why he can say that.

And Hillary just ignored it. I mean, she just didn't respond. She didn't say, I'll give you the transcripts because all I said was, I love America and we're going to fix everything and you bankers are dirty. Yeah, they don't pay you to call them names. Exactly. But it's just so strange that they're, well, it's not strange in terms of the real obvious benefit. If you're going to be a politician and you want to run for office, it's incredibly expensive to win. So you need some money. So you have to make deals with people who are willing to give you some of that money.

And you've got to figure out a way to be able to do this and for office and if you want to serve people within that political realm, that you have to go and kowtow to the corporate interests and the people with the big money in order to be able to fund a campaign, in order to win, so you can do good work for the people. You kind of got you told these other guys you were going to make them happy, too. I don't take any corporate PAC money or contributions from PACs or lobbyists or anything else. And there are more candidates running this year. There's over 100 candidates running for Congress this year who have sworn off any of those types of contributions and who run their campaigns fueled by individual donors. Well, there's people giving five bucks, people giving more if they can give more, and they're winning. There are a number of candidates who are showing that they're out-raising their opponents who are backed by PACs and lobbyists.

They're raising more money from people who are giving these small-dollar contributions and disproving that power balance where the people really do have the power if we stand up and get engaged and involved. What do you attribute that to? What's the change? What's causing this change? I think a big change happened when Bernie Sanders ran for president. I think he did a lot better than he first expected that he would. And the fact that he was able to raise, in some cases, more money than Hillary Clinton in certain quarters.

He was very competitive. And all of that came from those small dollar individual contributions. You know, he talked about, you know, $27 is the average contribution that he got. And that was kind of a rallying cry at a lot of his events. But people, I think people through that experience really woke up to their own power in this democracy. And that to have a true strong democracy, it really does take us all doing our part in whatever way that we can. If Bernie called you up tomorrow and said, I want you to be my vice president, would you be down? Oh, we'd have to have a conversation. Come on, man. What would the conversation be? you know he can't i mean he can't run again if he doesn't win in 20 right yeah i mean this is basically dude i mean unless

someone invents some crazy new medical technology that reverses aging you only have so much life in you yeah but you on the other hand you can hang in there for eight years you're not saying anything which is a yes there's something your wheels are spinning lady look i i here here's here's the way that i've always made my decisions from the time i ran for the state house representatives in hawaii and i was 21 years old a A lot of people said like, what are you doing at 21? This is crazy. But I cared very much for my home, my community, about environmental issues and things that I saw were not being addressed by many leaders in our state who I felt were out of touch. And joining the National Guard and later running for Congress, I try to make my decisions based on how and where I feel like I can make the most impact. So that's what I will continue to do.

Well, you definitely can make the most impact as vice president of the United States of America, don't you think? It depends who you ask. Well, if you ask me. Yeah? Is that your opinion? I would say. Yeah, I would say that's a pretty big platform. Although that Pence guy, you don't hear, if you ask me. Yeah. Is that your opinion? I would say. Yeah. I would say that's a pretty big platform.

Although that Pence guy, you don't hear a peep out of that guy. He's just kind of hiding. It's what you make of it, I guess. Just like any job, right? It's what you make of it. But isn't that a joke? Like if you want someone to disappear, just elect them vice president? I think that's a joke.

Unless you watch Veep, right? Oh, yeah. That's a different story. Right. Right. Or House of Cards, too, right? Oh, yeah. I think. think that's a joke i think unless you watch that before right oh yeah that's a different story right right or um house cards too right oh yeah i think um that's next level yeah yeah they're gonna keep going i don't know how they're gonna keep going they're gonna kill that guy off somehow or another that was somebody asked me when that that show for the first season came out like some of my family especially it may have been my mother, like, honey,

is that really what it's like? It's supposed to be loosely based on the Clintons. There, there are some quotes and some things like that, that Kevin Spacey had as the whip in the house. Like there were some things in there like, Oh wow. I've actually heard people say that, but all the,

all the salacious stuff, like I had to comfort my mom's like, no, I'm not like catching the subway late at night. Right. Yeah, well, that's a little funny. It was something over the top. Yeah, that was a little ridiculous.

Meet me by the subway. Yeah. Come on. Yeah. Spoiler alert. Yeah. For anybody. Bye.

We didn't really say anything. That was a long time ago. Yeah. But for a lot of people, that is their education on politics, unfortunately. But it's just such a complicated process. If you're a person that has a full-time job and a mortgage and kids and maybe you've got a hobby and you're supposed to be paying attention to these people that are running the country or running whatever it is, running the Senate or anything political. It's just too complicated. It's tough.

Like what you were talking about with these bills that get passed that have these hidden agendas deeply written into a thousand page document. How can a person who has three kids and a mortgage and a 40 plus hour a week job plus commuting, how can they pay attention to all this? No, it's very hard. And that's where... You come in. Yeah. And, you know, like I try to put stuff out on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram, social media, because most of us are on those platforms. And as you're scrolling through, like maybe you're going to see that one thing like, hey, you know, Congress just passed this bill

deregulating fracking and liquid natural gas that's affecting your water and your air and connecting the dots between what can seem like very out of touch policy wonky things to okay how does this actually affect you your family your kids your house educate like the things that really do take up most of people's time and consciousness and care on a daily basis. Yeah. And that's one of the more dangerous things I think about having a person like Trump as president is that it's eroding people's confidence in the person that runs the big show. That's one of a number of things that have eroded people's confidence. I think if you if you take that one step further and look at how people's confidence in our entire election system has been eroded.

When you look at all of the vulnerabilities that exist, a lot of the stuff that's being talked about now. Do you mean in terms of electronic voting, like the machines or. Yes. I think overall people doubt whether or not their votes matter, first of all. Did you see the documentary Hacking Democracy? No, I didn't. It's fascinating. And it was in regards to, what year was that? I want to say it's 2008. Was it eight? Six. So it was about bush and kerry right wasn't that bush and gore was it bush and gore whatever it was both elections actually oh yeah okay but it showed how there is built in third-party access so it's literally built into the system

that a third party can influence the count. And they showed how they did it in the actual documentary. They used these machines and influenced the results. Yeah. What to speak of the DEF CON hacking conference that just happened or happens annually in Vegas, but they just had one this year a couple of months ago, maybe a few weeks ago, where an 11-year-old girl hacked into a replica of Florida's election system and changed the outcome of their election in less than 15 minutes. There it is. An 11-year-old hacked into a U.S. voting system replica in 10 minutes this weekend. 11 years old.

Well, that's American ingenuity, ma'am. That's what we do here. We breed them young and smart. Hire that kid. Exactly. Give that kid a job. She's got a bright future. Yeah, right?

And there's tons more like her. Oh, there's probably millions now. I mean, kids growing up with computers from the time they're little and learning coding, like they're learning the English language. And just like the drive and kind of the thought process and that kind of desire to take things to the next, not just say, okay, okay, this is an iPad. This is how it works. That's fine. It's like, oh, how do we make the next generation of this? How do we break this and make the next better thing?

But we can bank online, right? Yeah. Why can't they vote online? Why can't they make all this as secure as they do banking? Well, you still see every now and then. Bank fraud. Well, yeah, there's bank fraud. There's direct bank fraud but

you also see um banks get hacked yeah and yeah they've got i mean they've got um you know their reserves and all that other stuff and they try to deal with those vulnerabilities and try to stay ahead of them but even the technology that banks use is not foolproof right and when we're talking again about voters having confidence that when they take that time on Election Day, take off from work or school or whatever and go cast that vote, that it's going to be counted and counted accurately. Like this is what's at stake. If people don't have confidence in that, then then we are in serious trouble. serious trouble. So one thing that I introduced a bill a few months ago, based on last year's DEF CON Hacking Conference results, that really showed the best way to secure our elections systems, the actual systems themselves, is either use paper ballots or have a voter verified paper backup if you're going to use an electronic system. So you have an electronic system and

then a voter verified paper backup. Right. So if there's any dispute whatsoever, then you go to the paper. You go to the paper. And if they don't correspond. You go to the paper. Yeah. So in Hawaii, for example, you can choose when I go vote, I can grab a paper ballot

traditional or I can go to the machine, which I usually do, go through and make my selections. And before I hit the final submit ballot button, there's a little printout that pops up in a little window that shows my voter number, who I selected to vote for. So I can actually check the paper myself before hitting submit. Virginia just did this. Virginia has off-year statewide elections. So they had theirs in 2017. Virginia has off-year statewide elections. So they had theirs in 2017.

And after that DEFCON hacking conference happened last year, they said, we have to fix this before our election. And they did. How did they fix it? And that's what they implemented. They did paper ballots or they did voter verified paper backups. And their elections commissioners came and testified in Congress after the elections were done. And they said that that was the first time in their entire careers that they didn't have a single complaint about the accuracy of the vote count itself, where in previous years, they had. But their proof that you can, like, you identify the problem. This is not going to take years to fix. Like you can action that within weeks and actually secure the outcome of these elections. That's what

I've been pushing for in Congress, especially as we head to these midterms, especially as we head into 2020. But again, it goes back to the point like my bill hasn't gotten a vote yet. Why is that? It's a very simple, like nonpartisan bill. Here's a problem. Here's a solution. We can action this now. But you have leaders in both parties who are just continuing to fight and fret and moan and groan about how we have all these vulnerabilities in our elections, but not actually doing anything about it. So using it as a partisan kind of political football. But again, why don't you actually solve it? Why do you think they don't solve it? Because it's issues like this that help with fundraising and they help kind of motivate people and they worry people and they bring all these fears about it's good for ratings. It's all these different reasons that frustrate people, frankly, who know about it when they're not actually seeing, you know, deliver results. You're talking about a problem now for months, Congress has been talking about

this for months. Where's the results? So you think they, they actively are ignoring the potential solutions, or that they literally want to keep this problem going? That's a good question. But the, you know, we have been talking about this, a number of outside kind of election security experts have been talking about this. Some of the hackers have been talking about the fact that the only way you can secure an election is by using paper. I cannot, I cannot come up with an excuse for why the leaders in these committees and in Congress have not actually, like whether it's my bill or someone else's bill,

why haven't they actually solved this? Because it's something that could potentially impact us in the coming weeks and months. Well, I remember the hanging Chad controversy. Yeah. And how many different votes got thrown out. And then there was also so many people that were denied the right to vote. Was it in Florida? Because they had either the same name or similar names with people that had some sort of a criminal record. Somebody made a typo when they put their name in the system and then they were they were made ineligible and then there was also some concern that some of that was deliberate because so much of it was

taking place in Democratic districts yeah it's um it's very disconcerting the idea that someone would try to rig an election yeah I mean we would like to think that that is an absolutely un-american thing to think of but people get it is American it is yeah people can come up with very strange reasons for justification of very awful acts. And this seems to be one of them. They think their side is right. Well, that points to the superdelegate issue that Democrats have been dealing with, where people who have been arguing to keep the system of superdelegates, where in a state like mine in Hawaii, for example, we've got four superdelegate votes, two for

the members of Congress and two for the senators. Explain that to people who don't know what a superdelegate means. This is something that is created by the political parties themselves. created by the political parties themselves. So the Democratic Party has been using the superdelegate system where as people are running for president, you have a certain number of delegates that go to one person or another based on that state's rules. So some states say it's winner-take-all.

Other states say that it's proportional. So if you get 60% of the vote, that means you get 60% of the delegates. But then you have this special category of superdelegates, which there are over 700 of them. It includes all 435 members of, or sorry, all Democratic members of Congress, Democrats in the Senate, and people who are appointed by the party leadership, both at the state and the national level. And so what we saw in my state of Hawaii, for example, is over 70% of the voters voted for Bernie Sanders, but out of those four superdelegate votes, he got one, which is mine. four superdelegate votes, he got one, which is mine. So the superdelegates don't have to cast their votes to reflect how their constituents voted. So how did the rest of them vote?

They voted for Hillary. So that puts you in a situation where, and this is not about, well, Bernie would have won without superdelegates. This is not even what that's about. This is about really looking at people casting their votes. And then you have this special group of people who are either elected or appointed, who can then say, I don't agree with the way that the people in my state or my district voted. So I'm just going to vote the other way, and then shift potentially the outcome of that election for that state or for the country. So did it shift it for Hawaii? Yeah. Yeah. So Hillary won Hawaii's superdelegates, but the people voted differently.

And it was 70% of the people voted for Bernie? It wasn't close. It was overwhelming. But she won the state. And that was how you saw in some states where, you know, I think, I don't know, Vermont. There are a few other states that I remember looking at where when they were counting the votes as they were coming in, they would report one number. His number was zero. And then there was a certain number that was already built into Hillary's count before the votes were even finally tallied because she had already had the declared support of those superdelegates within that state. So the Republicans don't do this. I think they may have superdelegates, but those superdelegates are required to reflect the votes of their constituency. So they don't have the freedom to change their vote or change their mind.

But, yeah, so this is something that I've been fighting to try to reform within our party is to get rid of superdelegates, to make it so that we have open primaries, so that you don't have to be a card-carrying party member to vote in a Democratic primary, because that was another problem we saw across the country, where people were turned away, because in some cases, well, you didn't register with the party a year ago, which is the requirement, and so have open primaries, and then you have same-day registration. If you're not registered to vote, you should be able to register to vote on the day of the election, so that you can participate in our democracy.

Those things seem so clear cut. It seems so cut and dry. But the superdelegate issue in particular, that's so disturbing. That seems so dirty. Yeah. So there's been some progress made since then, just recently the DNC had a meeting where it was a very strong majority of people who voted to bar superdelegates from casting their their own free votes in the first ballot in a presidential convention so I don't know it's been a long time since it's gone to the second or third ballot. But that was a major step forward to make sure that as people are going and casting their votes in these primaries, that they're not risking being overruled by, again, a group of special individuals who are elected officials, who are lobbyists, and who are party officials and people coming from all different backgrounds.

Is there any resistance to getting rid of these superdelicates? Oh, yeah. The resistance was very strong. It was not a given that this was going to pass at all. People who are very, very invested in this system. But it seems like they would have to be invested

in keeping the system rigged, like making it easy to influence elections by having these few people that you can control, having influence over these people. can control, having influence over these people. These people have massive influence over the results of the election. It is. It's so counterintuitive to what we stand for with our democracy. And I think there is, I mean, it's a fear of losing power, I think ultimately is what it comes down to. And you have people who said, hey, look, I've given my life to the party.

You know, I've put in all of this time and energy. I'm a volunteer. I'm doing this and all of that, which all of that is fine and it's great. But that shouldn't make it so that like, you know, as myself, as a super deli, and I've talked about this, I shouldn't have any, my vote shouldn't count for any more than yours or anyone else's. And that we should be strengthening and empowering and uplifting the voices of the people rather than saying, well, this small elite group has way more power than you. So we'll see what they think about things. It's so bizarre that that's a part of the system.

It just seems like that's something that should have been eradicated a long time ago. It should have been. Now, Bernie Sanders had to be fuming. Yeah. I mean, from that and then from finding out the DNC actively conspired to have him lose the primary, all of that. One last thing on the superdelegates that some of those who support it have said is that it is their job to be able to save the country in case the people elect someone who isn't good. That's hilarious. Yeah.

That is a hilarious justification. Oh, you know better than the whole country. Yeah. You must be super smart. Yeah. What kind of test do you have to take to take a superdelegate? To become a superdelegate, what do you have to do? Yeah, it's certainly not a written test.

No, it's really, I mean, again, you're either an elected member of Congress or you're somebody who the party chooses. Wow. The idea that the reason to keep that is because you know better. I mean, that's essentially what they're saying. You know better than all the people that voted. Yeah. So disrespectful to people. It's crazy. It's really crazy.

Yeah. So disrespectful to people. It's crazy. It's really crazy. Yeah. So, I mean, that's been, I think, a positive thing that has come through all of this is more people are saying, like, you know, I honestly wasn't paying a bunch of attention to superdelegates before all of this. And a lot of people had their eyes opened up to say, okay, this is clearly wrong. Why was it there in the first place? Let's do something to fix the process. Well, most people don't think until this election, the general public wasn't even aware that that was

the case. And then when people find out about it, they go, wait, wait, wait, what? They can just decide to not vote the same way that people voted. Yeah. And then the state can lose. Yeah. I mean, the person can lose the state even though 70% of the state voted for that person. Right. That's insane. Yeah, it is. Did you read Donna Brazile's book? I didn't read the whole book. I got excerpts from it and of it.

I was shocked that they conspired to have Hillary win the primaries. I was more shocked that more people weren't outraged. Yeah. What does that tell you? It tells you that people have sort of resigned to the idea that this is a corrupt system. Yeah. That they don't have time. I mean, it goes back to what we were saying earlier that, you know, people are exhausted.

Yeah. Most people. Most people are exhausted. you know people are exhausted yeah most people most people are exhausted and i think that's where you see a lot of a lot of the energy that came around for somebody like bernie sanders or somebody like donald trump who are perceived as being not of the system yeah but it it shows us it shows us where we need to go, honestly. And you're talking about authentic,

honest leaders who have integrity and, and, um, I think people are not as blind to that. People can tell, people can tell if you're being real or not, or if you're selling them a false bill of goods. I think they're better at it now.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Paying more attention. Well, it's also this – there's enough footage of people now. Yeah. Everybody's a reporter now. Yeah.

I mean it's easy to go back and say, well, look at this interview from four years ago when they were completely different. Like what happened i mean it's there's also like calculated maneuvers that people do politically to align themselves with one group or another where they realize like okay there's a lot of money in being a this that's a that you know there's a lot of money in being uh whatever it is yeah republican or democrat or there's there's an angle for success. Right. Yeah. Right. That's, um, all of those different labels and things that people are capitalizing on within the political world, I think are the things that are turning off more and more people to the politics, because then it's like, well, if you're not branded with this label, then I'm not going to

talk to you or I'm not going to have a conversation or it's this camp versus another camp, this tribe versus another tribe, rather than like recognizing even amongst our own families and friends and communities. Like we, we figure out ways to talk things through and find ways to collaborate and areas where we agree, we can agree to disagree on certain things, but we can do that with,

you know, what we in Hawaii call Aloha and with respect and actually find a way through to move forward. There's a lot of things that have been discussed in terms of the future of economics in particular with regards to artificial intelligence and automation and these radical changes that are probably coming, whether we like it or not. And one of the things that's been discussed as a potential solution to some of the economic woes is a universal basic income. Have you studied this? I'm studying it now. I'm looking at some of the places that have or are currently kind of launching pilot projects. I know there's a European country that did a two-year pilot, and then they decided not to go down that route.

I think there's – so, yeah, I'm taking a hard look at this because there are strong arguments, I think, on both sides. We've got to look and see what would the effects actually be. Yeah, I'm torn on it as well. I'm very open to the idea of it because I think that we very well could run into a situation where millions of people are almost instantly out of jobs, and there's no solution for that. Out of jobs by their choice? Out of jobs by automation, out of jobs by automation oh right yeah yeah oh yeah exactly their positions right yeah i mean this is a real problem yeah and and i don't think i don't think it's gonna

i don't think it's gonna happen slowly right i think that problem is gonna stumble onto us very quickly yeah and we are not prepared for this and then there's a problem psychologically people say that well well, if you just give people money, you take away their ambition and their will. And one of the things that makes America great is that people hustle and that you give a bunch of people money that they don't earn and they're going to be lazy. Yeah. I mean, this is the, yeah, the different counter arguments. And I think there's, there's points to if you look at how much taxpayer dollars are spent on like Section 8 housing or different affordable housing programs, on food stamps, on kind of these different social welfare programs, how much are we spending on overhead to administer those programs? And so would it make more economic sense to just kind of compile all of those benefits into one package and just

give people a check instead of piecing it out through all of these different things? And would we actually save money as a country by doing so? And the argument to incentivize productivity, even amongst people that are accepting universal basic income, I believe is to let them keep it no matter what. So the idea is even if you make $10 million a year, you're going to still get X amount of dollars per month as universal basic income. And you can choose to donate that to the causes of your choice. But if you're a person who's concerned that this is going to somehow or another stifle people's motivation to get jobs, because if you get a job, then they won't get that money, which is the case with welfare. Yeah, right. The idea that, you know, you you it's very difficult to get someone when you're giving them free money to say, look, you're going to have to work harder and then you're going to get less.

They're going to go, why would I work harder? So the idea is, and I believe Elon Musk is one of the ones that came up with this. Well, don't take away the money. Like everybody gets it no matter what. You can choose to do whatever you want with it. But the way to incentivize action and productivity is to make that money just universally available to everyone. Yeah. I guess that's the universal aspect of, of,

um, of that. Yeah. You know, I mean, I, I kind of believe that, I mean,

just culturally people, and we were talking about these young kids, for example, you know, I mean, they're not getting one paid one thing or another, but just their drive and their interest and kind of their intellectual, um,

uh, direction. I don't know. I think people are not necessarily lazy by nature. And I think there's something to be said for wanting to actually get things done. And I think you open up rather than saying, well, we've just got to, our purpose is just to work in a job. You maybe broaden that spectrum to where your purpose in life is not just to work a good paying job, but actually have meaning and purpose to what you're doing with your life. That's best case scenario, right? Yeah.

Best case scenario with universal basic income is you give people the opportunity to pursue their dreams. Right. Yeah. I think in large part, maybe the problem is planting the seed in young people at an early age that you're not supposed to just try to make money to survive. Here's your money to survive. What do you want? How do you think you would best fit in in this world? What is your contribution?

What could you do and i think that's that's um that opens it up into kind of how we view education in this country and how um you know there's all this this drive towards well you've got to get a college degree you've got to do this you've got to do that but really there's there's a lot more where people aren't asking those questions like what do you really want to do with your life? Asking that most important question of purpose. Yeah. And seeing, well, getting a bachelor's degree or master's degree or whatever, that may not be what you want

or how you feel you can best use your time or your skills. And whether it's vocational training or doing something else or starting up a business right away or anything else, I think we just have to broaden the spectrum here so that we're not so tunnel visioned where we're saying, well, you're going to have to go $60,000 in debt because you've got to get a college degree of which you will have no guarantee that you will get this high-paying job that you were hoping to get so that you make lots of money. And then you end up wasting your life wondering, what the hell did I do with myself? That's a very good point because I think the system that we have in place is not perfect, but yet we're not fixing it. We're not changing it. And college education is essentially subsidized and you have so much money that these kids are in debt with by the time they graduate. I mean,

I had a friend who made it through medical school and by the time he got out, he owed more than a quarter million dollars. I was like, that is fucking crazy the time he got out, he owed more than a quarter million dollars. I was like, that is fucking crazy. Yeah, it is. And he's like, when people talk about doctors and they talk about doctors being greedy, he goes, you have to understand that so many of them are struggling

just to stay alive. They're struggling just to pay their own bills and keep the lights on. The reason why they want to see 20, 30 people a day and just keep pumping in the numbers and just constantly do whatever they have to do, whether it's operations or whatever it is, and that they're not considering the overall health and welfare of these people and looking at all these different solutions, whether it's nutrition or maybe there's a way to avoid surgery or maybe there's a way to figure out a way to strengthen your body first before we do this or maybe we alter your diet and maybe you're not getting enough sleep. Let's take that into consideration and what kind of pills you want and how are they negatively affecting your health.

They don't have the time for that. They have another person that's waiting and then another person that's waiting, and they have to keep those people coming in because they need that money. Yeah. It's bananas. It is. And that's where, whether we're talking about the cost of education or the cost of health care, for that matter, when we look at technology and how we can both bring down cost and improve quality in these areas, I think there's tremendous opportunity.

there's a pilot program on the big island right now called paramedicine where current like medicare reimbursement laws say that as our emts go out in ambulance to pick up somebody they will only get reimbursed if they pick up that person and take them to an emergency room so never mind if that person needs to get their prescription drugs refilled which happens they'll call 9-1-1 for that if they're living out in the boonies somewhere and they can't get to where they need to go, or if that person needs to see a mental health professional or a social worker or anything else. So this idea of paramedicine that we're working on trying to build and actually change some federal policy to help support is really look out for what does this person actually need and not just shove them

into this healthcare system that drives up the cost for everyone and also use technology to do that. So I was asking him, okay, so you're not going to be able to physically bring a social worker with you on all these calls. Like that's not how you're going to economize your cost here. He said, oh no, we bring an iPad with us. So as a social worker at the clinic, and then we can dial them in and they can FaceTime with the person whose house that we've gone to, if that's the service that they need, and they can start helping connect them to resources. So that's where you're able to help kind of both bring down costs, but also making sure that we have the services accessible to those who need them.

Well, that's a fantastic idea just to avoid the trips to the doctor for rudimentary things. Right. But one of the things that Bernie Sanders brought up when he was running for president that I thought that was very, very intriguing was the possibility of free education. And, you know, obviously we have public schools when it comes to high school and junior high school and all that other stuff. But the idea of a public full education through university to your degree, do you think that's possible? I think it's possible, but I think it doesn't get to the root cause of the problem, which is the cost of education. And I think that if you write that ticket, then you are at risk of then these education institutions just saying, OK, so if you are guaranteeing X number of dollars for a student to go through and get that education, then we're going to adjust our costs to make it meet that amount. Or if it's a blank check, then they'll know that they have a blank check. So we have to get to the root cause of these challenges. Whether it is education or health

care, we have to get to the root cause of why are these costs being driven up so dramatically and not just say, well, we're going to pay for everything without actually dealing with the fact that things are not affordable as they are. Well, how did education get to a point where you could go bankrupt with any other kind of debt and you're no longer required to pay that debt? So if you owe credit card money, you lose your house, whatever it is, but if you owe money because of a college loan, you owe that money until you're dead. That is strange. I mean, it's one of the weirder things that we have in our culture

is that we saddle these young, ambitious people with insurmountable debt. Right. And that there are uh institutions that are really making a lot of money yes off of this right they're attached to it they've become addicted to this money right and this is a part of the system and they're profiting off of it and they don't want it to go away and somehow or another they've talked someone into passing these laws that make these kids stuck with this bill no matter what happens in their life. You know, get in a car accident, no longer take care of yourself, tough shit, pay that bill. I mean, it's really mafia-like.

Yeah. Back into the financial industry. Yeah. So it's really when you pull the veil back on kind of the crony capitalism that exists in this country, then you start to see and connect how it really impacts people's lives in so many different ways and how it affects the policies in our country. What was Bernie's solution for that? When he wanted to institute some sort of a free education system for higher education,

how did he envision that? And I don't know his bill chapter and verse, but I believe it was focused on public colleges, not private institutions, and that it was by levying some sort of tax on Wall Street to pay for it. That was the big criticism, that everything was going to be tax, tax, tax, tax, tax. But an inefficient system is going to chew up a lot of your tax dollars. So people were thinking their hard-earned dollars were going to go to some bureaucracy and a bunch of red tape and horseshit and too many people that are working, doing too many different things just to try to keep jobs going. Yeah.

That's the fear, right? Yeah. That's the big Republican fear. Yeah. In particular. Yeah. That's the big Republican fear. Again, I mean, I just point to soundbites can catch fire easily, but getting to the root cause of how we solve some of these problems is really what we need to do. How are we delivering education to people? Why is it that these colleges, why is it the cost of education has gone so far up and really in an uncontrolled manner? We look at healthcare. Why is it that, you know,

these prescription drug companies can raise their prices hundreds, if not thousands of percent on life-saving medication for people? Why is it that doctors are not required to go through any kind of nutrition training as they get their certification, they go through their medical school. When you look at how closely connected diet is and what people put into their bodies to the kinds of major sicknesses that are rampant in our communities, like diabetes, for example, you're not seeing that connection where you have doctors who are trained even a little bit in nutrition and how connecting that kind of preventive medicine and using food as medicine does not even play a partial role in a lot of the medicine, the Western medicine that's delivered today. It is strange, but is this the business of the federal government to get involved in how doctors are educated? I mean, how do you fix that without getting your hands into everything?

Because obviously we would like to believe that medical schools know more about how to raise doctors than you or I. But the government pays a lot of money to help take care of people and make sure that they have access to education, especially those who don't have money. And so it is our responsibility to try to do what we can to help improve that system, to make it so that it's affordable, and to look at these preventive health measures. I have yet to get a good answer from anyone in a medical school or in that field about why even, I'm not even talking about you have to become a licensed nutrition professional, but just having this basic education that will help them better take care of people, why that doesn't exist. Well, it's also bizarre that, I mean, it's such a complicated thing, especially diet and nutrition. It's so complicated that even nutritionists don't agree. I mean, you have experts in nutrition that, I mean, I'm having a bunch of debates coming up in the future,

two of them at the end of this month. debates coming up in the future, two of them at the end of this month. One, a vegan doctor versus a former vegan paleo scientist who believes that organ meat and eating animal meat is the key to health and happiness. The vegan obviously believes that that's not the case. And there's people that believe in high carbohydrate, low fat, low carbohydrate, all the different diets that are out there. It's so hard. Yeah. And then there's the reality that every person physiologically varies. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. But I mean, I'm just talking about like the basics, sugar. Yes. Alcohol. Yes. Yeah. And there are folks, some friends of mine in Waimanalo in Hawaii who have a little cafe and a farm and their goal is to be able to feed healthy food to their community.

And so one of the things that they do is they identify people on the island who are dealing with like 30-plus-year-old guy who's dealing with major heart failures already and who's obese and dealing with weight and diabetes and all these other issues and helping people like him change their diet. So they provide free meals to them for, I think it was like three months. And they have a doctor who's supervising and monitoring what the effect on their body is. And my friend Malia, she told me that one of these guys who came in, she's like, you know, you should try to eat more salad in your diet. You should try to eat at least once a day. You should have a salad. And he's like, oh, no problem.

I eat mac salad every day. Like mayonnaise, macaroni salad. Oh, macaroni salad? He thought that was a salad? And like legitimately that, he's like, oh, yeah, no problem. Like he really meant it. He's like, no problem. I eat mac salad every day. I like how he said that in a Hawaiian accent, too.

As a staple, right? Wow. He thought macaroni salad was salad. So that's what I'm talking about. The basic level of just eating fresh foods and cutting out sugar and minimizing fried foods, those kinds of things. We can't take for granted that everybody just knows this. Right. Especially when you're brought up in a certain way or a certain kind of culture or whatever, that that may not be something that you're taught.

And the benefit to all of us as taxpayers is that you're going to have less health care costs. If you're preventing people from getting sick, then you are lowering the cost of highly escalating health care. Right. And we're also looking out for each other. Exactly. Because there's information that we're distributing. Listen, you want to have your loved ones live longer and be healthier and not be incapacitated. Improving quality of life. My gosh.

You know, just the time that you'll get with your family and with your kids and being mobile and getting out and around. And so using the example of these people in Waimanalo, that's what they've seen with the folks that they've been able to help is about education. And like here's how you could eat in a healthy way that's good for you and seeing how that is impacting those individuals' personal health and their families has been really life-changing for some of these guys. Now as a congresswoman, what other bottlenecks are you seeing that you see in the system that you would like to change or fix?

Civil liberties is one that I have and continue to be focused on in an area where there is bipartisan support. When you look at a lot of the abuses that we have seen and continue to see in agencies like the NSA and in the post-Patriot Act world where laws were passed licensing warrantless spying on Americans, that is an area where we still need to make a lot of changes. Criminal justice reform is another, and this is one where uniquely right now, I think there's a moment in time where you have organizations like the ACLU partnering with the Koch brothers, very conservative Koch brothers, coming at and supporting the same pieces of legislation to end the federal marijuana prohibition, to deal with sentencing reform, to deal with prison reform, and to make it so that we're not constantly cycling these same people through our prison systems and that we're not throwing people into already overcrowded prisons who have no business being there.

Yeah, those are really important points. And I'm glad you brought that up. I've heard argument that the wiretapping and that the surveillance program is necessary to prevent terrorist activity. Does that make any sense to you? It is the most often used argument. The point here is that it is illegal to spy on Americans without a warrant. then as a law enforcement officer agency, you need, we're protected by our constitution in this way, where you have to do the tough work of building your evidence and actually getting a warrant to do this. But there have been example after example how this has been grossly abused.

This has been grossly abused and how, you know, whether it's our cell phone records that were being gathered in mass by the NSA or other things, we're seeing that because of the Patriot Act, there are the loopholes that have been created that have allowed these agencies to exploit that. There's also some weird rules where like if you get pulled over, they can't ask you for your PIN number for your phone, but they can use your thumbprint to access your phone. I didn't know about that one. Yeah. See if that's accurate. I'm pretty sure it is. I believe it pertains to whatever the crime is i don't think they could do it if you get caught speeding but i think if they believe that you're involved in something that may or may not be a felony yeah that they can check your phone and there's actually these

devices that they've been selling to police departments that allow them to crack into iphones which are supposedly incredible i'm sure you've heard this yeah yeah i mean why else would they have that? Unless, I mean, if you need a warrant to access someone's iPhone, I mean, you're going to go to whatever federal jurisdiction that's involved in that. They would have some sort of device. But police departments are looking to get this technology. How does it go?

Accurate. I'm accurate? Yeah. Okay. Interesting. So they can access your phone with your thumbprint. So they can go, give me your hand, Tulsi. Bam.

And then they got into your phone. Oh, look at that. Pictures of you naked. I'm going to ignore those. And I'm going to, look at this. Police can force you to use your fingerprint to unlock your phone. Like, what? That's so strange.

How is that? There's no difference. Well, the problem is, and this is good and bad, cops are people. Okay? They're just you and I, and they're just folks that have a very difficult job and a very high level of responsibility. But why would you allow them to decide whether or not they can go into someone's personal property and view their information and look at their emails, look at their text messages, and make a determination as to whether or not this person's involved in illegal activity without a judge and a search warrant. Right.

That's crazy. And without cause. Yeah. And I don't know if this is post-Patriot Act. Is this because of this? Or is this just one of the things that happens sometimes is that technology accelerates at a rate where we don't have laws that are pertinent to that technology. That's also a problem.

And there's some legislation that we've worked on that we are continuing to try to get passed to try to help get the laws caught up with where we are today. And there's one bill that we have that deals with emails, for example, where it's against the law to open up someone else's mail. But it's not necessarily against the law to open up someone else's email. That seems crazy. Because the law was written back when handwritten letters or letters sent through the U.S. Postal Service was the only way people communicated.

And it has not been updated to this day. That seems crazy.S. Postal Service was the only way people communicated, and it has not been updated to this day. That seems crazy. Yeah. What are your feelings on private prisons? When you're making money off of keeping people in prison, then you have a serious problem. The fact that we have a criminal justice system that is so broken that we're allowing these corporations to make money off of keeping their prison beds

filled, we are doing a disservice to those people, to our communities, our family, and every taxpayer who's paying money for these private prisons. I mean, it seems an obvious conflict of interest. Exactly. You have no incentive whatsoever to actually help rehabilitate people, help provide people with transitional training, with drug rehab, with all of these other things that can help people who have been incarcerated for one reason or another leave and never come back. And that's one of the bills that, one of the good news stories that actually has happened recently in Congress was we passed this bill called the First Step Act that deals specifically with this prison reform issue

to help make sure that those who don't belong in prison, like nonviolent drug offenders, don't go there in the first place, and to make it so that those who are there and those who are the returning inmates, we're actually addressing what is it that you need to make sure you don't keep coming back. And that was something that faced some opposition on both sides of the aisle. But again, it's one of those examples where when you focus on, okay, we may come at this from different directions. Like some folks are more concerned about the social cost and the impact on families and communities and how you're criminalizing people. Others are more concerned about the fiscal impact and how much money we're spending on these people cycling through our prisons.

Regardless, we both want the same outcome, which is less people in our prisons and bringing down the costs, both economic and social. And so that was a bill that we passed through the House. It's sitting before the Senate right now, but it has support from the White House. And ironically, there is a Republican senator in the Senate who is the number one opposition against this bill. It passed like, I don't know, there were over 300 members of the House who voted for it. So there's some hope there, but there's some work to be done in that area. How did we get to this situation? How did this whole private prison thing happen before people even realized it took place? You know, I don't know the exact history of who made it happen or who, you know, allowed for this government contract to take place.

But I think the sick part about it is that you have people who recognize that they could make money off of people who are going to jail. make money off of people who are going to jail. I'm sure you're aware of that Pennsylvania judge who was sentenced, who was, he was irresponsibly and wrongfully sentencing young people to jail for profit. Yeah. And so people would think, well, you know, you're never going to see that. That's not going to be, that's, that couldn't be real. But this is one of the real problems with profit, with the idea that you can make profit off of having people in your cell. ending the federal marijuana prohibition is look at how it is impacting the lives of those individuals who will now have a criminal record and follow them everywhere. Look at how it's

impacting their children, their family members, their opportunities for their future, and how these impacts are often very, very long reaching and impact a lot of these other social systems and programs that exist and how much more prevalent these arrests are than most people realize. Yeah, and then there's the economic windfall that takes place when you legalize it. Right. And that's the only thing that you're seeing where these states are voting for it because they realize there's massive amounts of tax dollars that they can make. I mean, I think Colorado is 39% tax on recreational marijuana.

And people are like, okay. Yeah. Like they just pay it. Yeah. Because even then, it's still not that expensive. That's true. Yeah. What to speak of? I mean, the people who are actually benefiting from this, especially, you know, these kids with epilepsy and those with other medical disorders. I've met with families in states like Iowa, for example, met with families and met with their kids who, you know, they are breaking both state and federal law in Iowa, where even CBD products are not legal.

Yeah. And so they're having to find ways to get it there. And they're trying to fight this within their own state to change the laws. But, you know, these people who consider themselves conservative Republicans are talking about this issue that they feel is a life-saving issue for their children. Well, once you see people that have cancer, that can't eat, and they're going through chemotherapy, and you realize that this may be one of the only things you can give someone, they're giving their appetite back. When you see children that have

severe autism, and one of the only things that can stop their seizures is medical marijuana. I mean, do you realize there's so many different things that we could help people with? It's not just about getting high. No, no. And there is personal freedom issues that you really shouldn't be able to tell someone that they can go get whiskey, but they can't get marijuana. Absolutely. Because it's foolish. Absolutely. And it's ancient. I mean, it's one of those really, we're stuck with these legacy laws that were perpetrated by people who were doing it just for profit. And it's not that this is a grand mystery. The writing is all, I mean, you can read it all. We know exactly how it all took place.

We know why prohibition was enacted. And it wasn't enacted to save the public. It wasn't enacted because we were really worried about people. It was people trying to profit. That's exactly right. And the same thing is happening now with this opioid epidemic, how there are states that have legalized either whether it's just medical or full legalization. There has proven to be a direct correlation to a drastic reduction in opioid related deaths in those states where people have access, again, either to medical or non-medical use of marijuana.

access, again, either to medical or non-medical use of marijuana. And you see, you wonder, okay, if we know this, and every one of the leaders in this country are so concerned about this opioid epidemic, why hasn't this been brought forward? You learn about the prescription drug companies who make a lot of these opioids, who are now making the other prescription drugs to help wean people off of the opioids. And so they're making money on both ends of the spectrum without really any care for the person there and their welfare and their well-being. And meanwhile, people are dying. Their lives are being ruined by it. also things that are federally illegal like ibogaine, which has an incredible result ratio in terms of getting people to kick addictions, whether it's alcohol, heroin, pills. There's clinics in Mexico that people go to on a regular basis to take this one psychedelic medicine that's

been shown to have radical results. It's not killing people, yet it's extremely illegal. It's a Schedule I drug in America, and it's one of the best examples. I mean, they're also using psilocybin. I mean, there's a John Hopkins study. There's several studies that they're doing right now that they're trying to show that there's a direct correlation between use of psilocybin in these clinical situations where they're curing cigarettes, heroin, all these different addictions with different psychedelic drugs that are Schedule I. Interesting.

There's a lot of work being done right now. MAPS is involved with one thing that they're doing that's helping a tremendous amount of soldiers and people with PTSD is with MDMA, is assisted MDMA therapy. And there's a lot of these that are being explored now where people had demonized these particular drugs or plants and they were thought to be something that would ruin your life. And now they're realizing, no, these, like many things, can be used or abused. And that there's solutions for a lot of our problems. But there's a lot of resistance to this. There's a lot of resistance in particular from, I mean, the resistance about CBD is one of the dumbest ones of all time.

Because CBD is non-addictive, non-toxic, not hurt, and massively beneficial to so many people, whether it's helping them with anxiety, alleviation of pain and stress. I mean, I even got Ted Nugent on it. Really? Yeah. Ted's never done anything with anything that had anything to do with hemp or marijuana. And he's got bad knees. So I got him rubbing CBD lotion on his knees.

He's like, this stuff's a miracle. I'm like, yeah, here we go. I mean, if you could talk Ted Nugent into using CBD. That's incredible. There's hope for the world. Yeah. But you just mentioned, I mean, whether it's CBD and hemp is another example. That's something that we're trying to do in Hawaii.

I think Kentucky, I think there's another state that's a leader in this. Slowly but surely the door's opening up with that. When they realize it's not psychoactive. It's incredibly beneficial, whether it's for food, whether it's for textiles, whether it's for oil. I mean, there's so many benefits. I mean, there's a thing called hempcrete, where they're making concrete out of hemp. I've heard about this. It's lighter, incredibly durable, flame-resistant.

There's so many benefits to it. And it's so economically viable. It's so cheap. It's a weed. Right. I mean, and it grows. I don't know if you ever felt a hemp stalk. It's one of the most bizarre things because it is as hard as this oak and it's as light

as styrofoam. It's so weird. It's such a, it's an alien plant. It's a very strange plant. But, you know, demonized for so long. And one of the things that's kept it from being economically viable is just people that don't want it to become a part of the competition. Yeah. They just don't want to compete with it.

Whatever they're profiting from, whether it's the people that are selling pain pills or the people that are using it for, I mean, it was initially made illegal because of paper. William Randolph Hearst got involved in it because he had paper mills. And he also owned newspapers, so he started demonizing it to get people to think that if we made hemp legal, we were going to have people running around on the marijuana, killing people and jumping out of windows. Yeah, that's crazy. I'm working with a Republican from Florida named Carlos Curbelo. Yeah, that's crazy. legalized to one extent or another, marijuana, to compile an independent fact-based report for the federal government on what has come about in those states in every respect,

whether you're talking about health care, economy, or criminal justice and law and every single thing. Look at this in a very diverse way and to have this entity do it that sits outside of the federal government. Because the challenge that we keep coming up against, both at the federal level as well as at the state level in some cases, is they say, well, there are no studies that show the benefits of what good will come about if you end the federal marijuana prohibition. As one example, in Hawaii just recently, the state legislature, House and Senate, overwhelmingly passed a bill to allow opioid addiction to be added to the acceptable things that medical marijuana can treat. So even though medical marijuana is legal in Hawaii, there is a limited list of, you know, the ailments or whatever that you can

prove your eligibility. Opioid addiction is not one of them. Legislature said it should be, which I agree it should be, but it was vetoed by the governor who said, well, those studies aren't proving that this will help those who are opioid addicts. And there is a bureaucratic process that takes a really long time if people really want this to happen. What are the other things that are of concern to you as a congresswoman that you're seeing not addressed or that are somehow or another still in place when you feel like they should have been eradicated? You know, there's a long laundry list of issues,

and I think you can go through each of the major issues that a lot of folks are concerned about and pick those apart and say, hey, here are the things that we need to address and improve in each of those. But I think the conversation that I hope more people start having is about how, why aren't these things being fixed or addressed? And that speaks directly to people's unwillingness to actually talk to each other, to stop demonizing each other because you're from the other camp and actually engage based on our common mission of serving the people, serving the people of this country. And, you know, that's something I look back to during my time in uniform, serving the

Hawaii Army National Guard. You got diverse people, diverse opinions, diverse ideas. But ultimately, you know, we wear the same flag on our uniform and we are focused singularly on that same purpose and mission. And unfortunately, that's what we're missing a lot of in Congress is the hyper-partisanship and the political winds too often take precedence over the reason why people in our districts hire us to go and work there.

And a lot of that comes from not having a basic level of respect or aloha for each other as people, and instead just saying, hey, it's us against them. Pick your label. And that's where the battles are fought. And who suffers as a result of this, the people who are suffering and who are dealing with a lot of the challenges that we've been talking about. So that's something that, you know, I try to bring, I try to bring Hawaii's aloha to Washington and try to bring that through in the work that I'm trying to do on these different issues in the conversations that we're having. Sometimes it means you talk with people who, who you disagree with, or you

may have different ideas than they have about how you solve these problems. But if you, even if you're able to come together on one thing, then we can start to see problems actually being solved and delivering results. Well, what I saw from you in video is exactly what I've seen from you in person. You're a very genuine person. You're very intelligent. And you give me hope. You give me hope that there are politicians that are legitimately in it for the right reason and that they have a real vision of how to fix things.

So thank you. Thank you. And thanks for being here. Pleasure talking to you, Joe. Really appreciate it. Thanks so much. Tell people how to fix things. So thank you. Thank you. And thanks for being here. Pleasure talking to you, Joe. Really appreciate it. Thanks so much. Tell people how to find you online. I am on social media at Tulsi Gabbard, Instagram, Twitter, yeah, all of those things. And you can go to my website, which is votetulsi.com. Go there. Vote Tulsi. Thank you. Maybe she'll be president. Aloha. Let's close with aloha. Vote Tulsi. Thank you. Maybe she'll be president. Aloha. Let's close with aloha. There you go.