The Press Box - Senator Adam Schiff on the Democrats’ Direction, Election Day Nightmares, Data Centers, and JD Vance

Episode Date: August 14, 2026

Today on The Press Box, Bryan is joined by California U.S. Senator Adam Schiff to discuss a wide range of topics, including the state of the Democratic Party; President Donald Trump’s business ventures and financial growth while in office; the ongoing conflicts in Iran; David Ellison’s threat to leave California if the Paramount–Warner Bros. merger isn't approved, and much more. Additionally, they explore why Karen Bass deserves another term as mayor of Los Angeles and how JD Vance is trying to separate himself from Trump. Host: Bryan CurtisGuest: Senator Adam Schiff Producers: Jon Jones, Jessie Lopez and Chris Thomas Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, media consumers, and welcome to another bonus edition of the press box. It's Brian Curtis here, along with producers John Jones and Jesse Lopez. We are right at the end of primary season. And this week, the Democrats got a lot of good polling news, especially when it comes to the Senate, where they need to gain four seats to take back power. So who better to talk about the good, the bad, and the Thanksgiving of the midterms than the man who stopped by Ringer headquarters today.

Senator Adam Schiff from California. Adam Schiff was elected to the Senate in 2024 after winning a feisty primary of his own. Before that, he spent more than 20 years in the House where he was a relentless critic of Donald Trump. Today we talked about the midterms, the direction of the Democratic Party, data centers, J.D. Vance, Iran,

the Paramount Warner Brothers merger. And at the end of the interview, you'll hear Schiff make a trademark ringer list and become the first sitting member of Congress to talk about the 1990 Tom Hanks movie, Joe versus the volcano, on this network. But first, politics. Here's Adam Schiff. Senator, thanks for coming by our L.A. headquarters today.

It's a pleasure. Good to be with you. So after watching Democratic primaries in Wisconsin, in Michigan, and New York and other places, what direction do you think the party's moving in? I think the tent is getting bigger, which I think is a good thing. If we're going to be in the majority, and I am very optimistic about the midterm, terms, we need to have a big tent. We need to invite everybody in. I think it's difficult to extrapolate too much from these races because you've seen moderates win like we saw in Wisconsin, a very close race, and progressives win in Michigan, and moderates in New Jersey, in Iowa,

in Virginia, and progressives in New York City. But I do think the common denominator is these are all people who are challenging the status quo at a time when the status quo is deeply, deeply unpopular. And I think that's going to be the key to success in November, and that is to be out there pushing back against incrementalism, fighting the Trump cost of living, and the Iran war, and promising and delivering something much better, and that is bold reforms for the future. Now, people on the leftward side of the party would say, hey, we won in Michigan. We almost won in Wisconsin despite a flawed candidate. We won those races in New York that you mentioned. isn't the energy within the party on the leftward flank?

You know, I think those that won with very centrist positions would say otherwise. I do think we're a big tent, and frankly, these races are very candidate-dependent, candidate-specific. You have some very charismatic progressives like Mamdani, and you have some very charismatic centrist's and moderates, and I'm glad they're all in our party. I think we're a bigger, better, stronger party with this kind of diversity represented and with people challenging the status quo because it's just not working for people. We have a different problem than we did during the Great Depression or the recession when people were largely out of work. The problem today is that people are working and they can barely get by. And for too many millions, they look at the life their parents had and they see it as better than what they have.

they look at the life their future, you know, for the future, for their kids, and they're filled with doubt. And I think it causes millions of people to entertain any demagogue who comes along promising they alone can fix it. So we've got to address this. It's been, frankly, a problem that both parties have not addressed. This began in the 1970s when for the first time we started to see as the country became more prosperous and more productive, that prosperity, wasn't being shared with, people that made it possible. And we have got to do something about that. There was a batch of Fox polls this week that had some really good news for Sherrod Brown in Ohio that had Abdul El Saeed trailing in Michigan. Are you worried about El Sayyad's ability to win in that state? It's going to be a hard fight.

And I'm supporting him and was on the phone with him earlier this week. We have to win. We have to hold that seat. But I am very optimistic overall about the midterms. We are tied or ahead in a last with Mary Peltola, in Ohio, we shared brown in North Carolina with Roy Cooper, in Maine with Troy Jackson, in Texas with James Tala Rico. We have candidates who are one point down in Kansas, only three points down in Florida and Mississippi. This has every hallmark of a wave election in our favor. And I think as long as we keep the focus on the economy and making it work for people, we're going to route them in November. What concerns do you have about the direction of the party?

Well, I'm concerned that we keep our focus where it needs to be, and that is this is a referendum on Donald Trump. This is a referendum on his corruption, on his unwillingness inability to deal with the cost of living, his obliviousness, his believing that housing is so unimportant affordability is a hoax. it's a referendum on the party in power. And it's also a kind of a call to action when it comes to improve the economy for the American people. And if we keep the election focused on those things, I think we're going to have a great midterm. We just cannot allow them to push us off message. So getting away from Trump and the economy would be getting distracted by what, for instance? Well, they're going to want to make this about communism and socialism.

And we've seen them use that playbook before. And we just can't let them change the topic to communism and socialism. We have to keep it focused on the economy and making it work for people. Big issue on the campaign trail has been data centers. Some Democrats want a moratorium on building data centers. Others say no moratorium, but we want conditions put on the companies that build them. What's the right position on data centers? It may depend on sort of the progress of data centers in a particular state.

Some are already getting saturated and they may need to. have a moratorium. Others may be more open to it, and it also depends on the situation with what kind of abundance they have of water or scarcity of water and other conditions. I have a bill, and I think this is really a central focus, and that is it would make the data centers bear the costs of any changes to the grid, any new infrastructure that's necessary, any new upgrades that are required and hold consumers in the area harmless so that they're not driving up rates, so they're not socializing their costs onto everybody else who can't afford it. And right now the White House says this is their goal and they have some guidelines,

but nothing that's enforceable, nothing that is not going to simply be ignored. This needs to be in statute. We need this to be mandatory, not a wish list. argument for a federal moratorium is that AI is changing the country in the economy in ways we don't understand and the regulation has to catch up to that technology. So what's wrong with that approach? Well, I don't know that a national moratorium is the answer. I do think there are significant national security concerns that even without the addition of new data centers are present. I mean, we've seen some of these frontier models escape the lab and go out into the wild

and hack into other companies. And obviously, these tools can be super powerful for ransomware attacks and other destabilizing things. So the national security issues have to be addressed. We also, you know, are in a competition with China and the rest of the world with these technologies and the proliferation of these technologies. And we don't want to lose that competitive edge either.

So I don't think this is a one-size-fits-all. I also don't think that we should federally preempt the states. Some of the industry would love to see us preempt the states from passing regulations that protect users. I've got legislation and part of it just passed out of committee to try to make sure we're protecting kids from chat pots that might be coaching young, impressional kids on how to take their own lives. I want to make sure that kids are protected, that parents are empowered. and I also want to make sure the states aren't precluded from doing that because with all the money against this kind of legislation at the national level and with our poor track record when it comes to social media, the states are in a position to move faster than we are. If Democrats have a majority in the Senate come January, what do you want to do first? I think if we're smart, we will keep our focus first and foremost on what we're campaigning on, and that is measures we can undertake to bring down the cost.

of things. So we did pass a bipartisan housing bill, which was great. It was a moderate, modest proposal. It was one, of course, the president refused to sign. It became law in the absence of a signature because he could care less as he told us about housing. But we need to build millions and millions of new houses to bring down the cost of housing and make it affordable for people. We need to address the insurance crisis. People can't afford their insurance. I have legislation to create a federal reinsurance facility so that we can help bring down insurance costs. We need to attack these anti-competitive mergers of grocery stores that are driving up food prices. We have to protect against energy, cost increases from these data centers.

So if we're smart, I think we keep the focus on making life affordable for people. Democrats obviously want to do very different things than Donald Trump did when they take back Congress and eventually the White House. But after watching Trump for the last year, do you think Democrats could learn anything from the speed with which he's implemented his agenda and the way he's wielded executive power? Absolutely. Absolutely. They have demonstrated that if you have the courage of your convictions, you can move the country fast and far, in their case, in a horribly backward direction. But it also means that when we're in power, we need to move the country fast and

forward and not violate and trample the law. I don't want to see a devil Democratic Justice Department, being used to go after the president's enemies and go after people in the Congress for making videos that the president doesn't like or seashells cases against James Comey. I don't want to see any of that crap. But I do want to see a Democratic Party and a Democratic majority that is willing to do both things like Medicare for All or reform of the Supreme Court, you know, reinstating protections around voting. I want to see us get things done.

What's the use of executive power that Democrats have been less than enthusiastic by using when they have the White House that you'd like to see them use next time around? You know, I'd have to think about what's the, you know, what are the right uses of executive orders as opposed to statute? Because a lot of what the Trump administration has done has been just illegal. And most of it is getting struck down on the courts. So I don't want to see us do that. But I do think it's going to be necessary for a Democratic administration. to clean house because they have saturated so many of these agencies with unqualified, incompetent people who are just there for partisan purposes. We see this, for example,

in the cancellation of all of these renewable energy projects in blue states where Secretary Wright testified under oath that politics had nothing to do with this. And then in litigation, we found out just how false that testimony was. When documents revealed that politics was the only thing that had to do with this, that they were basically canceling projects in states on the basis of who they voted for in the presidential election. So we're going to have to put an end to all that crap. Now, I think that can be done by executive action, but we also need to put it in place safeguards to make sure that these kind of abuses don't take place in the future. I've introduced a bill that I had introduced

in the first Trump administration called Protecting Our Democracy. Act that's designed to rebuild a lot of the guardrails that have been torn down, things that we thought were inviolate norms. It turns out you can violate as long as you have a party in Congress that is feckless and unwilling to stand up to you. So we need to enshrine in law a lot of protections that right now are being trampled upon. Is Chuck Schumer the right person to lead Senate Democrats going forward? We'll make that decision after the election.

And I respect everything he's doing right now to make sure. that we win these midterms and how indefatigable he's been out there raising money on the campaign trying to help people. I came from the house where we had a speaker and Speaker Pelosi who was a generational talent and had both the confidence of the progressives, but also the respective moderates. Moderates understood that she would have their back and she did. And that's, I think, the model. That's the gold standard. But it's a tough job. I can tell you as a fairly new member of the Senate, more so within the House, everyone in the Senate thinks they're their own king. We have a lot of folks who are used to running states as governors and if it was difficult to

herd cats in the House, it is doubly difficult in the Senate. So you're looking for a generational talent, somebody that can appeal to all wings of the party and also have a political presence that's as big or bigger than the body itself. You know, we need to make sure that our Senate leadership is inspiring to the country, energizing to young people that can keep moderates and progressives on the same page, fighting for the same causes. And, you know, we'll have a discussion within our caucus about who the best people are to do that. And I don't want to get into the internal caucus politics.

But, you know, these, you have these elections. every new session, and we will have one as well. You endorsed Karen Bass this spring. What's the argument that Bass deserves another term as L.A. Mayor? I think no one is working harder to help address the problems that Los Angeles is facing, whether it's homelessness or public safety. No one is working harder than this mayor. I think she has enormous integrity.

I worked with her in the Congress for many years. I've known her well before she was involved in public service. I just have a lot of respect for her. And I think her heart is in the right place. I think she has the ability to be a convener and bring people together. Now, we've been through some really difficult times. And those, you know, that calls for some tough decisions about how to get things moving, including how to build housing fast in Los Angeles and break down those bureaucratic barriers.

I see here making progress on those issues. and I want that progress to continue. That's what I was going to ask you about, because in May a poll found that Bass had a 31% approval rating and that just 24% of Angelinos thought L.A. was moving in the right direction. So she's the right person for the job. Why are those numbers so low? Look, it's a really, really hard job as mayor

because you have enormous responsibilities and you don't have most of the power you need to actually get it done. And this has been a problem that has plagued every mayor we've had in Los Angeles. I think it plagued Mayor Garcetti and Mayor of it. Villaragosa, this is a really hard job, especially in Los Angeles. You have a bully pulpit, you have a convening power, but you don't have a, you know, make it so kind of power. And that makes it really hard. And, you know, we have these intractable problems that a lot of cities have. Homelessness is certainly one of the paramount challenges. But here's the thing

with dealing with homelessness in Los Angeles or frankly anywhere else. And that is you can spend billions of dollars moving people off the sidewalks and into housing. And there will simply be new people taking their place on the street if you don't bring the cost of housing down. And that is not something that a mayor of a city alone can do. That is something we need to do at the federal level. I've got a bill called the Housing Boom Act to dramatically expand the low-income housing tax credit. It's something the state government needs to do.

It's something local government needs to do in terms of limiting bureaucratic roadblocks. And I think the mayor is working on that. But these problems are bigger than cities. And we need to work on them together. I've noticed in your press releases that you often refer to the Trump administration as the Trump Vance administration. Yes. Is that you trying to muddy up J.D. Vance before the 2028 presidential election? No, I hold him responsible, as he should be held responsible.

Vance the other day, this was I guess maybe three weeks ago, said that if Watergate were to happen today, he boasted it would be a 12-hour story. That is J.D. Vance's way of telling the country, we have made corruption so routine in this administration that Watergate in which Nixon abused the CIA to interfere in an FBI investigation in which the president, in which the president. President's henchmen broke in the Democratic headquarters and bugged the place in which the president knowingly lied to the country about it to cover it up. J.D. Vance says, that's just a 12-hour story in our administration. He's proud of the corruption. That's just disgraceful. So, yeah, I hold him responsible for that whole climate and culture of corruption that he's helped to cultivate. He doesn't get a pass. But I'll tell you this. I not only refer to the Trump vance administration.

I call it the regime, the Trump regime, because it acts much more like a corrupt, would-be dictatorial regime from some other country. How have you noticed Vance trying to separate himself from Trump? Well, he's trying to separate himself from Trump on the war. He doesn't want the Iran war, this complete debacle, to be blamed on him. But he is enabler number one of the war.

of the president's agenda. And of course, Vance knows just what a destructive force that Trump is. He wrote about it in his book. He is not the current book, which is, well, I didn't know you could write a book and publish a book without a spine, but he's managed to do it. But this is a guy who warned the country about Trump being a potential Hitler, a cultural opioid, but he decided, hey, if this potential Hitler is my ticket to power, I'm all for this potential Hitler. How can anyone respect someone like that? You mentioned the war in Iran. How do you think

Trump should end the war at this point? He needs to either come to Congress and ask for the authority to continue this war and make the case for it, or he needs to withdraw our forces. And that is not just an opinion. That is what the Constitution requires. He has now just driven the country into this terrible cul-de-sac. It is now a terrible quagmire in Iran, and he doesn't know how to end it. I suspect what he's going to do is make some face-saving declaration that he is one victory in Iran, that they've made a promise not to develop the bomb. And I think about how he ridiculed Obama over a comprehensive JCPOA agreement with Iran that required inspections and cameras and all the rest of it and sanctions and snapback sanctions.

He is prepared to settle for nothing. He's prepared to okay a $300 billion reconstruction fund for Ron. He appears ready to permit Iran to charge tolls in the Strait of Hermuz. he is in such a weak position. He's such a terrible bargainer. The only thing is that he's good at is promoting himself, but he's never been a good dealmaker, not when it's negotiating with a country like Iran.

So I don't know how this ends. I suspect it ends in some nebulous statement of the president that is laughable, that even the Iranians mock because they've been doing a pretty good job mocking him. When you say withdraw our forces, You would want him to withdraw our forces and just make the best deal he can at this point, which is probably worse than the deal he could have made a month ago? I think he, again, I think he needs, if he wants to perpetuate this,

he needs to come to Congress and get the votes and outline a strategy. They don't have a strategy. Their pronouncements change every day, every moment, every hour. I can't tell them how to dig their way out of the hole they're in now, but I can tell you that what they're doing is unlawful and constitutional. it's getting our service members killed and needs to come to an end. And I'm going to continue bringing war powers resolutions, which continue to gain Republican support until we bring an end to this war.

Benjamin Netanyahu made a case for Trump to pursue this war in Iran. Do you think the war has made Israel safer? No, I don't. I think it's been a tragic mistake for the United States and for Israel. And I would say this too, because I remember in the beginning of this war, Marco Rubio, trying to say, this is Israel's fault that we're, war. And he made the argument that it was a bit convoluted, but the argument was, well, the Israelis were going to attack Iran, and we would get blamed for it, so we had to attack Iran. And interestingly,

the president distanced himself from his own secretary of state. No, no, that wasn't at all true. Trump said, no, if anything, we forced Israel's hand. When you're the commander in chief, you can't blame some other country for your bad decisions. But, you're in the commander. But, you're particularly when it's a bad decision to go to war. We make those decisions ourselves, and yes, there are other countries Israel included who make their arguments about what they think is best for themselves and what they think is best for the United States. But obviously, they have their own self-interest at heart.

And they should have their own self-interest at heart. But I think it was a terrible decision by both the United States and Israel. Is there any positive outcome to this war, accidental or otherwise? It is very difficult to see what that looks like because I think Iran has discovered they already have a nuclear weapon. And the nuclear weapon they already have is closing the Strait of Hormuz. Prior to the war, they probably theorized that maybe they could close the strait. Maybe they could withstand U.S. military punishing them with bombing. Maybe they could still keep it closed, but they didn't know.

And now, sadly, they know. And it is very hard to unring that bell. I want to ask you about Cuba, too, because since the beginning of the year, the administration has been preventing oil from reaching that country. Do you think of that blockade as an act of war? Blockades are acts of war, yes. And again, they should be coming to Congress to seek Congress's authority. The reason they don't is because the majority in Congress just doesn't care. I mean, majorities in Congress generally don't want to vote on war issues because it can only come back to hunt them.

So it's also a heavy degree of political cowardice. But this is why the president feels emboldened to blow up ships in the Caribbean to go into Venezuela and seize that country's dictator and why it's essentially threatening military action in Cuba and blockading Cuba. But yeah, these are acts of war. If a country blockaded the United States, we'd certainly consider. consider that an act of war? What do you think should be done with regard to Cuba? Look, I think the Cuban regime is a horrible communist dictatorship, and we should do everything we can to try to support opposition in Cuba, support dissidents in Cuba, but in terms of using American military force and risking the service members' lives, that is not a step that

I would support. I want to ask you about Trump's self-enrichment. He made more than $2 billion last year when he was president. I think the size of that figure almost makes it hard for people to grasp. How do you explain Trump's self-enrichment so that a voter can actually understand it? It is such a big number that it really is hard for people to wrap their heads around. I think just pointing out the corrupt schemes, regardless of the dollar sign attached to it, is a powerful way to communicate to the country what he's doing. I mean, let's take the most recent corrupt schemes. of the president. And that is his truth social social media company, which he has the largest share in.

Now wants to sell advanced access to his posts on his own platform that changed the value of stocks. So he wants you to pay him, pay his company to get advanced notice of his pronouncements about this company or that or this deal or that. or whether he's going to allow invidia to export chips. So you've got the president buying stock in companies, making pronouncements to increase the value his own stock, and then to add further insult to injury, selling advance notice and profiting from that too. You don't have to assign a dollar figure to that

for the American people to look at it and say, oh my God, is this the same guy that talked about emptying the swamp? he's the biggest swamp creature we've ever seen. And of course, this is just one of innumerable schemes of his. So I don't know that the dollar sign is as powerful as just explaining how the corruption works, how his kids are profiting. And he's profiting. I mean, Melania movie was an Amazon $40 million bribe to the first family

because they want cloud computing contracts. ABC and CBS paying him millions and millions of dollars because they want their mergers to go through is just outright bribery. And I think we always have to bring it back to this. What does this cost the American people? If it's these payments that are making mergers happen and thousands of people get laid off, that's the cost to the public. if as a result of these mergers, you now have to pay more for your streaming services and have fewer choices,

that's the cost of this corruption. If Amazon, because they made a $40 million payment to Melania, if Amazon gets a contract, that's not the best contract for the American people that you as a taxpayer paying too much for because they paid Melania money for a movie, that hurts you. That hurts the bottom line for the American people.

And most significantly, when you've got a president spending so much of his time on a frigging ballroom and chasing down donors who have government contracts to pay for the ballroom and using taxpayer dollars to pay for the ballroom, you know what it cost you? It cost you having a president who's not focused on helping you afford the cost of living. He's focused on a stupid ballroom. I mean, who builds a golden ballroom while people are struggling? Well, Donald Trump does. when you look at his true social play and the $2 billion more generally, do you see a scandal or do you see a potential crime? Oh, it's both.

It's certainly both. I mean, and we're going to be doing oversight to get to the bottom of these things. But so many of these ventures and profit-taking and self-enrichment schemes violate U.S. law, probably innumerable laws. Now, part of the reason this is happening is because John Roberts, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, decided to give Donald Trump immunity. Absolute immunity in some cases, but a immunity is so broad, so sweeping, that the president thinks, oh, my God, this is the gravy tray. I can engage in all this criminality, and John Roberts has given me. a get-out-of-jail-free car.

It's one of the reasons why Trump 2 is so much worse, so much more corrupt than Trump won. It's why after Trump's first state of the union, he went up to John Roberts, who was there on the House floor, shook his hand and said, thank you, thank you, thank you, you'll never forget. John Roberts' legacy is going to be enabling the worst corruption we've ever seen in administration.

That is going to be how the Roberts court has come to be viewed over time. And I think for Roberts, it was the same decision I see so many of my colleagues in the Senate make, and that is he will do anything to be close to the seat of power. Roberts decided that rather than do the right thing, do the constitutional thing, and side with three other justices who were appointed by Democrats, no, he'd rather hold the pen. He'd rather be closer to the center of power on that court. And he was willing to sacrifice the country's interest to do so.

And he has one of the reasons that so much. The other reason is anyone who had any independence, any gravitas, any commitment to something beyond the person of the president was ineligible for his cabinet in the second Trump term. So there's no Secretary Mattis. There's no restraint on this president, no one to say no to him. You just have, yes, people like Todd Blanche now. I want to ask you about election security senator. You and other Democrats have been part of these tabletop exercises, which are essentially war games for November 3rd. What happens in those exercises?

We take on different roles. I think I was one of the Republican leadership in Congress in one of those roles. And you kind of game out a scenario, and I'll tell you the scenario that most concerns me, we're going to have our poll watchers out there and they're going to have their poll watchers out there. it would be very easy to seed the crowd with outside agitators who provoke violence in major cities, to give the president a pretext to invoke the insurrection act or call out the military, or call out ICE or Border Patrol, to seize ballot boxes. So we're going through scenarios like that one. How does that get started and how far can litigation go to preventing these things and how do we mobilize against them?

So we all play a different role. We make the arguments that we think the president is going to make and congressional leaders are going to make and the court is going to make. And we try to anticipate and use those war games to develop our strategy to counter them. And what did you say as Republican leader? Well, you know, I kind of parroted the MAGA talking points that there was massive fraud in the election and millions of undocumented. people were voting, or if it's a close election urging the Speaker, the Republican Speaker, Mike Johnson, not to seat a new member of the House that would decide the majority because a lot of people are raising questions about fraud. And why? Because the President is making

all these false claims about fraud. You hear Mike Johnson do this all the time. And you hear Trump do it all the time. He says there's illegal voting going on. And then he says people are concerned. And Mike Johnson says people are concerned about voter fraud. Yeah, because you keep on lying to the public. You keep on pushing out this big lie. So when we war game it, we push out the big lies they push out. And we figure out how do we respond to that? Walk through that particular scenario.

Let's say ICE agents, uniformed military, do show the polling stations in November. They do seize ballots or voting machines. What do Democrats do next? Well, we're breaking it down into real. three periods. The period up until the election in which they're trying all these voter suppression efforts, what happens on election day, and then what happens after election day, I'll the scenario with Mike Johnson. And I don't want to go through all the particulars. I don't want them to be able to anticipate everything we plan to do. But we're really trying

to identify, okay, what are the tools that we have? How can they most effectively be used? and I will acknowledge there are not perfect answers for these things. We're an uncharted territory. And it brings me back to 2020 when about six months before the election, I suggested to Speaker Pelosi that maybe we set up a task force to try to identify everything that might go wrong in that election. What if the electoral college is tied? What if a state sends more than one slate of electors? What if the vice president doesn't do his job?

And she thought that was a good idea. And we set up a task force and we came up with about a thousand. and things that could go wrong, except the one that did. None of us anticipated a mass violent attack on the capital was beyond our comprehension. Now we have to contemplate a whole broad range of things that were unimaginable before. And because these are completely new things that could happen, there is no track record, no experience of how to deal with it. So we're coming up with the best responses we can.

The Democratic playbook is substantially different than it was in 2020 or 2024. It is. It has to be. It has to contemplate a whole different level of potential illegality by the president. When the predominant threat to our democracy comes from the president, we're just in uncharted territory. Just about every Democrat would say that defending democracy is important, but then there's this interesting argument about whether it's an effective campaign issue. Should Democrats be talking about defending democracy on the trail right now? We should, but like talking about corruption, I think we always have to bring it back to why is this important to people and we have to bring it back to the economy. And that is right now we have a regime, a Trump-Vance regime that thinks it's completely beyond any form of accountability. It is riddle with corruption from top to bottom.

It is not responding to the problems of the American people. And that's not good for the American people. It's why our economy is struggling. It's why the jobs numbers are as bad as they are, and inflation is as bad as it is, because they don't care about you. They don't care about you. They just care about making money for themselves. Their personal economy is doing great. They're making money hand over fist.

I also think that we're not going to have a solid democracy until our economy is working for people again, until people feel like if they're working hard, they can succeed. They can provide for themselves and their family. Those underlying economic problems are the reason why our democracy is in danger. So first, we've got to fix those economic challenges, but we also have to make the case that dictatorships don't produce good economies. And the fact now that companies have to decide, are they going to pay off the president to do business? that they're put in that position, you would think if they had a little more guts,

corporate America would be completely up in arms. This is administration that wants companies to give up a stake in their business to the White House in order to be able to export their products. Talk about socialism. This administration is engaged in trying to nationalize industry,

but we have to make the case that this corruption is just bad for the economy, man, bad for the American people. Since you brought us to the topic of business, Rob Bonta, the Attorney General here in California, is suing to block the merger between Paramount and Warner Brothers. My colleague Matt Bellany reported that David Ellison, who's the chairman of Paramount Skydance, told senior staff that if Bontad did negotiate a settlement that he, that is Ellison, would move Paramount out of California. She responds to that. Well, I think it shows the kind of arrogance we see

from some of the super wealthy in this country, from the Elon mosques and others, hey, if you don't do what I want, I'm just going to pick up business and I'm going to leave the state. I care so little about the people in this state. I care so little about the people in this industry that if I can't get what I want,

I'm just going to punish them further. What does that say about any devotion to the people who work so hard and make that magic happen? whether it's at Paramount or Warner Brothers or anywhere else. I've represented Burbank, Glendale, Pasadena, Hollywood for many, many years in the House, and do now in the Senate. I love this industry. I love what they do. I love movies.

It breaks my heart to see what a difficult time they're going through. Just yesterday, I was in Burbank. A gentleman came up to me on the street. He said he's worked in the industry for 25 years. He hasn't had a union contract in three years. He's never seen it so difficult for people to make a go of it. It's just heartbreaking. And there's so much we can do to change that.

We should be focused on a federal tax credit like the one I've been caring for years and years. That helps us compete with other countries that are basically stealing our industry because they're offering incentives that we're not matching. The California incentive is great, super important, but it needs to be overlaid by a federal incentive. And I wish that the industry was spending more time focused on trying to make that happen. I think there's bipartisan support for it. There may even be support in the White House for it. This is how we bring the industry back to the country.

But I have deep concerns about what this merger will mean. And we've seen other mergers result in massive layoffs. We've seen it result in a consolidation that forces up the prices of streaming services and gives us less choice at higher costs. So I think those antitrust concerns are valid. I want to ask you, too, about the news part of this merger, too. Are you concerned that CNN and CBS News would be under control of one company and one person and David Ellison? Absolutely.

I mean, look what's happened to CBS. Look what's happened to 60 Minutes. 60 Minutes was the flagship representing freedom of the press and a willingness to speak truth to power. and look how its editorial integrity has just been destroyed by this new regime. Look at how the editorial policies of the Washington Post have been changed by Jeff Bezos because his business is Amazon. It's not the Washington Post. Look at the editorial policy of the LA Times and how that's been affected by their owner,

by the withholding of an endorsement in the last presidential race. We're seeing the president's FCC chairman go after ABC because the president doesn't like Jimmy Kimmel's monologues. It's disgraceful. And we need to fight back against it. The press has done an amazing job. It's more important now than ever, but it's more under assault than ever. And am I worried that, yes, CNN could become another Barry Weiss-like CBS with its editorial independence neutered the way they've done at CBS and 60 minutes? Yeah, I'm damn concerned about it.

What would have to happen to make you satisfy that the Paramount Warner Brothers merger could go forward? Well, I would like more than a unenforceable promise about how much production they'll do in California, in the United States, with the, theatrical releases. I'd like some commitments about the workforce. My fear is that this merger and the cost of it, driven up by Netflix attempted merger, means that the debt load is now so high that the only way this will pencil out for this merged entity if it goes through is by massive layoffs. So I would want some ironclad assurance. That's not going to happen. And, you know, a simple promise or a vague letter isn't going to cut it because we've seen that stuff before. So I think the last thing industry can afford right now is more layoffs, less production here at home.

And so I'd like to see people who are really committed to making this industry work. People are not threatening to leave the state that don't get what they, want. And I want to see a real effort to have a federal tax incentive so that we can keep this work in the country. Matt Bellany also reported that David Ellison reached out to various Democrats to get help in negotiating with Bonta. Did he reach out to you? No. Would you take the call if he did? I would take the call. In fact, I've reached out to him on the tax issue because he has made some efforts to get some of my colleagues in the House interested. and we have an effort likewise in the Senate to get that federal tax credit.

I'd like to see him do a lot more of that. Speaking to movies, when you were a lawyer here in Los Angeles, you were writing screenplays on the side? I was. I'll tell you a funny story about that. There was an only Times profile of me during the first Trump administration that framed the piece by talking about in the beginning of my screenwriting. And at the end, saying if you wrote a screenplay about what's happening here with the impeachment and everything else, it would be more improbable than fiction. Somehow that got to Trump's attention because for a short time,

he started calling me a failed screenwriter. And when he did, I remember telling my staff, he doesn't realize what a great favor he's doing me. Half my constituents are failed screenwriters. They're going to think he's just like me. How'd you learn how to write screenplays? I love movies. So I learned watching movies.

I remember when I was a young lawyer going to the Motion Picture Academy library of screenplays and just reading through screenplays and learning the structure of a screenplay and the form of a screenplay, the length, the, you know, the typical points of plot turns, etc. So some of the structure that isn't as apparent when you're simply watching movies. And I've always loved to write. So it was a good melding of those interests. There was a crime thriller called Minotaur that was one of your screenplays?

Yes. What was that about? I actually had an offer for an option on that. It was, I would best describe it as presumed innocence. Presumed innocent means silence of the lambs. This is like the beginning of the player, where every movie is something plus something else. Yes, well, that's how pitches are made. So we got presumed innocent, we got the courtroom stuff, and then Silence of the Lambs, we got a serial killer.

Yes. On the loose. Oh, I like that. We like lists here at The Ringer. And you were kind enough to make a list of movies. These are movies you would recommend to young people? I'd recommend them to everyone. But maybe a lot of young people haven't seen them.

So I would put on the list, certainly, the Big Lebowski. Okay. Yeah, maybe wait a few years before showing that to your kids. Well, we waited to my son's bar mitzvah to show him that. In fact, recently I did a video for our YouTube channel. entitled, All You Ever Needed to Know About Politics, you can learn from watching The Big Lebowski. And I'll give you a little sample. One of my favorite lines in the movie is, you're not wrong, you're just an asshole.

And I used the scene where Matt Gates is attacking Kevin McCarthy on the house floor and talking about how unfit he is to be speaker. And then, of course, played the line, you're not wrong, you're just an asshole. which seemed like a perfect description of Matt Gates in that moment. But another Cohn Brothers movie, True Grit. Also with Jeff Bridges is just a fabulous movie. I always recommend one of the classics, and you just can't get better than to kill Mockingbird, which every detail about the score, the acting,

the screenplay, everything is just perfection. and it's rare that you have a great, great novel, and you have a film that is equally great. That just doesn't happen very often. But there are so many others, I would say, if you're going to pick one foreign film to watch, Cinema Paradiso is a fabulous, beautiful masterpiece. And again, even just the score of that film is just beautiful.

I won the Oscar back in the day for Best Foreign Film, if I remember correctly. That's right. Your staff also told me you like the movie, Joe versus the volcano. I do. From 1990, this is a Tom Hanks, Meg Ryan movie. What about Joe versus the volcano speaks to you? You know, it's this kind of dystopian future film mixed with some sci-fi and slapstick.

And somehow it all works. The plot is a guy is dying of a brain cloud and is persuaded to jump into a volcano. So it's actually quite realistic. But one of my favorite lines from the film. is one of the characters, I think Meg Ryan says, 90% of the world is asleep. And the other 10% is in a state of constant amazement. And I used this in a graduation speech recently

and urged the graduates to live in that state of constant amazement. Don't be so preoccupied with everything else that you miss how incredibly amazing the world is. everywhere around us. It's just quite incredible if you open yourself to seeing it. I had not seen that movie since I saw it with my mom

in the theater back in 1990, and I rewatch it this week, and it is a magical movie and has some wonderful character actors in it, too. Dan Hadeas in it, and all kinds of people kind of pop up in it. But it is a really interesting message

coded in this strange fantasy that, as you say, involves someone jumping into a volcano at the end of the movie. And one of the things that I I watched it again recently, and one of the things that I'd totally forgotten is this island, this Polynesian island, is inhabited by people who got lost at sea. And I don't know whether this is like one of the lost tribes, but they speak in a kind of Yiddish. And for some reason, known only to the screenwriter, have a fondness for orange soda.

Yes, that's right. These sunkissed like drinks that they're drinking. John Patrick Shanley is the screenwriter, director who wanted to do doubt on Broadway and have this very different career. But it's an interesting movie. All right, Senator Adam Schiff, we'll see you on Capitol Hill and also at the movies. Thanks so much for coming on the press box. It's been a pleasure. Thank you.