The Press Box - Senator Mark Kelly on Trump and Greenland, ICE Raids, Combat Missions in Iraq, and His 2028 Plans

Episode Date: January 24, 2026

Hello, media consumers! On today’s episode, Bryan interviews Senator Mark Kelly (D-Arizona). Their conversation starts with his thoughts on Trump’s attempts to acquire Greenland (01:21), what he thinks is driving Trump’s foreign policy in his second term (03:18), and the purpose of the video he and other Congress members released about ignoring illegal military orders (07:19). Next, Bryan and Senator Kelly discuss how it feels to be 15 years removed from the horrific shooting of his wife, former House Representative Gabby Giffords (D-Arizona) (15:31), before diving into his thoughts on Trump’s actions in and against Venezuela (17:33). After that, they talk about his experiences as a fighter pilot in Iraq (27:16), whether Democrats were prepared for Trump 2.0 (33:23), and immigration (40:18). Lastly, Bryan asks Senator Kelly if he is running for President in 2028 (48:22), before ending with some classic Ringer pop culture questions (52:02). All that and more, here on The Press Box. Host: Bryan Curtis Guest: Senator Mark Kelly Producer: Bruce Baldwin Additional Production Support: Ben Cruz, Conor Nevins, and Chris Thomas Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello media consumers. Welcome to Pressbox. Brian Curtis of the Ringer here along with producer Bruce Baldwin. In about 30 seconds, I'm going to be joined by a guest who stopped by Ringer headquarters here in Los Angeles today. He is Senator Mark Kelly, the Democrat from Arizona. Now, if you've heard Mark Kelly's name over the last few weeks, it's probably because he is suing Defense Secretary Pete Heggseth. More on that story in just a moment. But by way of background, Mark Kelly was. a captain in the Navy. He was an astronaut. He was elected to the Senate for the first time in 2020. In 2024, Kamala Harris vetted Kelly as a possible running mate. And two years from now, Mark Kelly may run for president himself. He and I had a chance to get into a lot of topics today,

including Greenland, ice raids in Minneapolis. We talked about Kelly's own combat missions in Kuwait in Iraq during the first Gulf War. We talked about J.D. Vance and how the Democrats can communicate with the country. Here's Senator Mark Kelly. Senator, thanks for coming on the press box. Brian, it's great to be here. What do you make of the week that Donald Trump spent trying to acquire Greenland? I think it is still, there's a lot to go in this saga. Call it a saga. It's certainly unnecessary. Greenland's an ally, Denmark's an ally. We have the option of putting military bases on Greenland, there is a strategic component of this. I get that part. But to do this to a NATO country who's an ally to threaten them with the use of force, I do realize he changed his tune on

this. But we all know Donald Trump for who he is and he can go back and forth on things. And he doesn't mind throwing military force at what he perceives as a problem or an issue. I've noticed that you often see this from people who have no military background, who doesn't really get the consequences of putting people in harm's way. I think what he has done on this issue over the last couple months has been dangerous and damaging. I think the damage is already done. It's going to be hard to fix this with our allies.

I mean, whether it's, you know, Canada, the UK, Denmark itself, other Baltic countries, France, they all feel burned by this president. And it, the reality of this is it makes all of us less safe. We are a superpower, not just because of our economy and our military and the men and women in the U.S. military and how capable they are. We're really a superpower because we have friends. And those friends are, you know, they're going away. Twelve months ago, I think a lot of Trump supporters would have described him as anti-interventionist. Right.

What do you think is driving Trump's foreign policy in his second term? Well, he campaigned on being anti-interventionist and not starting new wars and getting out of conflicts. I think it's the people around him. My understanding is he has a tendency to listen to the last person in his ear. He has put a lot of yes people around him. You know, there's no General Madison anymore. There's no General Kelly. There's no McMaster.

There's no Rex Tillerson. You know, people that were accomplished, professional, understood the consequences of the actions that our country takes. He doesn't have those people around him anymore. He's got a lot of yes people. So he listens to them. and they have some bad ideas. When I think about a story like Greenland, I almost hear two different voices in my head at the same time.

Voice number one says, you must take Donald Trump seriously because when he says fantastical things, sometimes they come true. And voice number two says, if you spend three days talking about Greenland, you are talking less about, say, ice operations in Minneapolis.

Or the Epstein files. Or the Epstein files. Like what happened to that? Right. So what's the right level of, seriousness to treat a story like Trump and Greenland. Well, we've got to take it seriously. Just listen to our allies.

You know, listen to Prime Minister Carney and others in Europe. They're freaked out about this. They should be. When you threaten, essentially threaten to attack a NATO ally, you wind up in a situation where Article 5 has to be invoked and we could find ourselves in a situation if we put forces on Greenland. You're, you know, you have French, UK, German troops there. What are they going to do? I mean, we're going to face off against our allies. This is ridiculous and it's dangerous. And it really needs to stop. Now, he supposedly has this plan that he rolled out the other day.

It doesn't sound like Denmark knows much about it. The framework of a deal we heard. The framework of a deal that our ally, Denmark, who, you know, possesses the territory of Greenland, no concept of what's in there, right? So obviously not done collaboratively with our ally, Denmark. And so where does this go from here? I don't think anybody knows. He talks about Golden Dome. He needs this for Golden Dome. By the way, that's a system that's probably not going to work. I've talked about this, you know, frequently on the Armed Services Committee. He thinks you give it a different name. take Iron Dome, expand it across the United States, throw a little bit of money at it. We're protected from ICBMs. He wants to extend that and says he needs that for Greenland. Greenland is strategic. If we are attacked by nuclear weapons from Russia, they come over the North Pole, come over Greenland. I guess in theory you could put interceptors there. But this plan to have this, you know, giant, you know, network to protect the entire United States. Well, I could see us throwing a trillion dollars at this thing and get something that doesn't work.

It's hard to do. But this fixation on Greenland, I think it's part of a distraction from Venezuela and the boat strikes. It's also a distraction from ICE operations in Minneapolis, soon to be in other places. And it's clearly a distraction from the Epstein issue. He does not want these files to be released. He went to court over the other day. even though he signed the legislation to release the Epstein files. You were suing Defense Secretary Pete Hedgesith.

And the backstory for people that don't know is that in November, you and other members of Congress, former members of the military or the intelligence services, made a video. And what was the purpose of that video? Well, it was the second video we did, sort of about the situation we currently find ourselves in with a president who I obviously did not vote for. 77 million Americans somewhere around that did.

But a president who, in my view, and others and the other people in the video were either in the military or two of them were members of the CIA. And we're either in the Senate or in Congress, myself and Alyssa Slokkin, in the Senate and four House members. This president has said things that really concern me on many occasions. Let me highlight a few of them. When he was running for office in 2016, he said on a debate stage that we, the United States, should be killing the families of terrorists. That means killing women and children, uninvolved people. Brett Baer told him, well, that would never happen because the U.S. military, that would be illegal, and the U.S. military wouldn't do that. Donald Trump responded with the U.S. military will not disobey my orders.

That's concerning. He also talked about when he was president, first term, shooting U.S. citizens, protesters in the lakes. He was talked out of that by Mark Esper said, we can't do that. He talked about sending U.S. troops into cities for the military to train in these cities. What that means to me, as somebody who served 25 years in the United States Navy, that means you're going to use U.S. citizens to train on. They're going to be part of this. That's wrong. It's unconstitutional. So there's been a lot of things that we are concerned about, and we're just year one. Well, we're now into year two of the presidency. So we put out this video to say, members of the military should not follow illegal orders. There's a plaque. West Point. It says when the law and orders are in conflict, you follow the law. It's in the Uniform Code of Military Justice. President didn't like it, what we said in the video. He said we should be hanged, executed, prosecuted. Now I'm in a situation with the Department of Defense

because I served 25 years in the Navy. I spent a lot of time in the Navy. Part of that I was at NASA, but I was on active duty, so they're sort of prosecuting me under military law. Trying to demote you and essentially reduce your retirement pay. Yeah, I retired as an 06 Navy captain. They're saying that they're reevaluating my retirement grade. If they reduce me in rank, that takes away some of my retirement pay, something I earned from 25 years of service. But here's the thing.

This isn't just about me. And this is why this is really important that I put up as in the best defense I possibly can. Because there are perhaps a million other retired veterans out there that if they can do this to me as a U.S. Senator, as somebody who spent 25 years in the Navy and take away, my pay for something I said just because they didn't like it, even though it was truthful and it was restating the law, they can do that to anybody. And Donald Trump, I don't think it was really about like, you know, really what I, he just didn't like it. Right. And so I've got to stick up for all these veterans, but also U.S. citizens. This is the First Amendment we're talking about. I mean, this is the first one in the Bill of Rights.

I mean, this is freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of press. This is really serious. If they can infringe on my rights, my First Amendment rights, but also the separation of powers and due process, they can do. do this to anybody. I read you did not think that video would get much traction. I didn't. I actually was really surprised because it was the second one we did. First one, you know, you see it on Twitter. It got a bunch of views. Sure. You're a senator. You want it to get traction. Yeah, we do. We didn't do that just to, we wanted members of the military to, you know, to see it because the message is important. It's a lawful message. It's basically just says

follow the law. And then Donald Trump, you know, got wind of it and then really went to, immediately to execute them. The commander in chief saying that six of us, six members of Congress should be hanged. Do you think that's ever happened in U.S. history before? I don't think so. I don't think we could find an example of that. No, you cannot find an example of that. And it's an unhinged thing to say. Your wife, Gabby Giffords, survived an assassination attempt. So how do you feel when the president posts something like that? Well, it increases the risk to me, to Gabby, to my family, my kids, my grandkid, death threats against us, including my wife skyrocketed.

And we had to get security and also for my children. So that kind of language is dangerous, you know, from a president. It's wrong. But we've seen this kind of stuff from him before. I mean, I'm not the first target. I mean, Jimmy Kimmel's been, you know, a target of this kind of stuff. I mean, the law firms and universities and this seems to be a habit with him. He has this view of the world that if you are not on his team, if you're not with Trump,

and I find it odd, he often talks about himself in the third person. if you're not with Trump, you're the enemy. And in our lifetimes, we've never seen anything like this from a president. Every president I've ever paid attention to since the, I mean, the first president I remember was Richard Nixon. Even Richard Nixon, something happens in our nation. He would use that as an opportunity to try to bring us together, right? I mean, he had all kinds of problems, right?

He did things behind the scenes. Donald Trump does these same things out in the open. But an instinct of every other president is to unite the country. And Donald Trump, at every opportunity, tries to, you know, push us apart. Do you ever feel like Trump and his allies have picked you as the political enemy of the month? And that by responding, however rightful you are to respond, that you are entering their reality show? I haven't really thought about it in those. terms because I feel like on this issue of the First Amendment, I'm the first one. I just happen to be the

first one through the breach here. And I got to put up the biggest defense because they're coming after all of us. They're coming after other people too. And I've got to defend the First Amendment. And I got to defend retired members of the military. Because if I don't and I just throw my hands up, you know, who's going to be next. I've had input already from multiple retired members of the military that have told me privately. They don't want to say this publicly, but have told me privately, this has affected what they have said publicly now that they've left the military. Because if he can go after me, I'm on the Armed Services Committee. It's actually my job. You know, oversight and accountability of the Department of Defense, it's in my job description.

And if they can go after me for something I said, of course, if a member of the military criticizes, a retired member, criticizes the administration, what's going to stop them? I noticed that you and your wife were in Tucson last month, or earlier this month, to commemorate their mark the 15th anniversary of the shooting that injured her and killed six others. We live there. How has the passage of 15 years affected the way you see those events? It's gone by quickly. You know, when Gabby was shot, she was in Congress.

She just gotten sworn in to her third term. We were in Washington, and then she goes back to Arizona to do what she called the Congress on your corner. Guy shows up with a gun, shoots her in the head, kills six people, injures 12 others. Happened in about 15 seconds. Change our lives forever. the Navy and left NASA because of that. I flew one more flight into space when she was in the hospital. Final flight of Space Shuttle Endeavor, which by the way is right down the street here, the California Science Center. And, you know, since then, you know, we started a political

organization to deal with the issue of gun violence named after Gabby. It's called Giffords, you know, just trying to get some sensible gun laws that most Americans agree with, you know, common sense things passed. So we did that. I did some other things for a while. And then in 2018, the night before the 2018 election, I'm at a get out the vote rally and some young woman comes up to me and says, she says, hey, my son has Down syndrome. And I'm terrified. He's going to lose his health insurance. Would you please consider running for the U.S. Senate? Not something I'd ever really spent a lot of time talking about, but, you know, her words to me had. impacted me. And I thought about it over the next couple months and then I announced in February

2019. So we've been on this roller coaster. Like 15 years have gone by, you know, rather, you know, quickly. Gabby always, especially lately, she's been saying, you know, 15 years, you know, you kind of can't believe it. That was 15 years ago. I want to ask you about Venezuela. January 3rd, Nicholas Maduro is captured, brought back to the United States. States. How do you view that episode now? Well, he's a bad guy. Needs to be prosecuted. I don't think anybody should feel any sympathy for him at all. Regime change generally doesn't work out well for, you know, the United States. Didn't work well in South Vietnam or Cuba or Libya or Iraq or Afghanistan. I don't think it should be our policy.

Having said that, the military did a fantastic job of extracting him. I've been briefed in detail. I really commend those men and women in the U.S. military that, you know, plan that operation, conducted that operation. I mean, it went really, really well, and that's not always the case. But now we have, you know, Delci Rodriguez, the, you know, hand-picked number two of Maduro. who, you know, also, you know, has issues around criminality. You know, I think we've got to figure out a way at this point to allow the Venezuelan people to pick who their leaders are going to be. I'm concerned with, you know, what's next here.

The president says he's taking, you know, Venezuelan oil. And certainly when there's oil tankers that are sanctioned and shouldn't be going to certain countries, we have a right to intervene. I don't have a problem with that. What I do have a problem with is him taking the revenue from that oil, sticking it in an overseas bank account, skimming a pretty big percentage off the top. And then he somehow personally controls that piece of the revenue. What does that sound like? I'm from New Jersey. I think we know what that sounds like.

Right? So I grew up in, you know, the fictional city where Tony Soprano went to high school, you know, West Orange, New Jersey. and there's so many things that are wrong about these operations, including the whole concept that you're going to go after these drug boats. Initially it was about fentanyl, right? We're going to go after fentanyl. Then they realized these boats don't actually carry fentanyl. So then it became about the cocaine that are on these boats.

And then it became about regime change, and then it became about oil, and then it went back to regime change. who knows where this is going. So I've got serious concerns. We had a vote in the Congress to prevent the use of military force in Venezuela. And the first vote passed, and then the arm twisting started of my Republican colleagues. A couple people caved, and ultimately we have not successfully prevented him from taking the next step if he decides to do that. I want to come back to those boat strikes, especially with regards to the illegal orders that you were talking about, because there was a big story in the New York Times this month that the Pentagon used a military plane for one strike.

They killed 11 people on one boat. And the plane was painted, the report said, to look like a civilian plane, which some legal analysts say that's against the laws of armed conflict. In your mind, would orders involving such a plane count as illegal orders that a member of the military would be right to refuse? Well, I, so that plane is reported by the New York Times. What they are reporting there is some of the most highly classified stuff we have in the military. We talk about this stuff in the SCIF and the Armed Services Committee. I'm also on the Intelligence Committee. So I'm going to talk about that.

I respect, you know, how we have to keep certain information, you know, from, from, the public. I will say, though, that, you know, there are often, you know, constitutional issues about, like, what the president is able to do in certain situations. When you get to the illegal orders thing, people should think about this as what does the, what would a common person think about what they're being asked to do? It's not difficult. You know, like if the average person would think that that is unlawful, you probably shouldn't do it. You should probably go to your commanding officer. Or if you have time, go to, you know, the JAG officers and have a discussion about it. And, you know, what we've seen with,

you know, some of these boat strikes, especially like the overall, you know, is, is this what we should be doing? Should the president be using the military to do a law? enforcement operation, when by the way, you also have the Coast Guard that's interdicting boats. Should the first option be to strike a boat when this is, when we're not at war? Now, they say this is a war against narco-terrorists. You know, I read the 40-page analysis of this. It's rather circular kind of logic. There's a lot of holes in it. So I question, you know, the legality of the entire operation. And I also, you know, questions specifically some of the things that have happened there, you know, raise huge concerns. So here's what should happen. The U.S., the Department

of Defense should be transparent with the American people. They should show the video of that second boat strike from September 2nd. That video should be made public. There's no reason. There's nothing in there in that video that should be, you know, I've seen it, not classified. I think the American people should see it, and there should be an explanation. For people to don't know, this is the first strike left to survivors, who apparently started waving to, waving in some way. We don't know if they were waving in a U.S. military plane. We don't know who they were waving at, but then they were killed in a subsequent strike. There's been a lot reported about that video. You know, again, I saw that in the skiff. I've got a lot of questions about it. Other members of the

committee do. I'm sure the public would have a lot of questions. They should release the video. the legality of the entire operation against boats and whether the people on those boats could be considered enemy combatants. And I guess that's where the illegal orders thing comes back to, because would a member of the military be right and saying, this whole operation is potentially illegal? I don't want to participate in any of this. Yeah, I mean, that's tough. I mean, what we were talking about when we made our video were like specific things. There's been things throughout history. You can go back and see that were obvious, should not have happened. when you're talking about an overall operation that the commander-in-chief decides to conduct,

I think that gets to more of like constitutional and big-picture legal questions about, you know, is this how we should be using the military? What we're talking about in the video is, like the example I used up front is, let's say, you know, I used to fly A6 intruder. I flew 39 combat missions in the first Gulf War. I even sunk two ships and, you know, bombed all kinds of stuff, buildings and tanks and roads and all kinds of stuff. Never once did I think anything I was doing was over a line. But let's say for a second, I got an old. order to go after a building. And I was told that there's no terrorists, there's no enemy combatants

there, but there's a family member of like a high value target. And we're going to kill the spouse and the kids. Well, that's the kind of thing that we're talking about. It's the kind of thing that Donald Trump mentioned on a debate stage in 2016. And one of the reasons why I made this video, and been in the chaotic environment of being in combat, you don't want to put service members in those situations. And certainly it's good for them to remind them of what the rules are. I remember being told this, and every service member is, especially when they go in.

You don't follow unlawful orders. You follow legal orders. You're required. You can be prosecuted for not doing that under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. But when something is unlawful or illegal, you don't follow it. Some people get reminded of that a lot. I think infantry guys actually hear it special operators probably hear it a lot. Pilots, we don't hear a ton and other people don't hear it.

At least I'm just speaking from experience. I don't remember talking about it a lot after I first got in the Navy. So we're just reminding people. But we're talking about those things that are really black and white. Yeah. And in that hypothetical scenario, you would have said no. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to kill the family.

Yes, absolutely. Yeah. I've seen in your back and forth with... I also, by the way, had a commanding officer, Terry Tombs from Iowa, who's no longer with us, who I can't imagine a situation where he would ever ask myself or any of the other members in our squadron to do anything like that. You've talked about being shot at on those combat missions you flew over Kuwait in Iraq during the first Gulf War. You also told Lawrence O'Donnell recently, you almost got shot down numerous times. Can you describe an instance when that has? happen? Yeah, my first

combat mission, I was myself and Paul Fujimura. We were heading to Shaiba Airfield in southern Iraq it's in the city of Basra. And I had to go through multiple SA6, SA2, SA3, surface air missile rings in the range of all these missiles.

See some missiles getting shot at us at one point. We make the turn. Now we're heading west towards the target, maybe about 10 or 15 miles out. I see a bright white dot from a missile launch. And when it stays in the same position relative to you, if it's not moving forward or aft and it's just getting bigger,

what that means is it's coming right at you. So this thing's tracking on us. And I told my Bombadier navigator, Paul Fujimora, that things coming right at us. Now, he's focused on keeping the cursor on the target, make sure we get our bombs on target, and eventually the thing gets so close I have to do what's called a last ditch maneuver. So I roll upside down, full power, put the stick in my lap, we go down,

missile goes over the top and explodes. Big explosion. Get heading back towards the target. Maybe now we're at like eight, ten miles. You know what's worse than seeing the first missile? Seeing the second one coming at you. That is a really bad feeling. We went through the same thing again.

Second one didn't blow up. Then we eventually get into our 30-degree dive. there's bullets, AAA with tracers coming up through the clouds at us. Get our bombs off, hit the target, head back to the ship. Hours to get back to the ship. And then you've got to land on the ship at night. That's the cherry on top of the mission, night landings on the aircraft carrier, not the most fun thing to do.

What does your pilot's brain do when you're being shot at? Oh, that's a really good question. First of all, it's not like what people think. It's not like what you see on TV. And you tend to, and I got shot at multiple times, I got shot at from, you know, AAA from a ship, you know, going into other targets with bullets flying all over the place or in Kuwait Harbor. You kind of resort to your most basic level of training. So if you're normally operating at like a 10, when the bullets are flying,

You're like at a six. But here's the thing. In the U.S. military, we train a lot. Pilots fly a lot. You know, we do these big exercises, things like red flag. People have, you know, heard of. We do these overseas. We are really well trained.

So when we go from a 10 to a 6, we're still better than everybody else. I know this because I spent a lot of time with Russians, like Russian cosmonauts. who are military fighter pilots. These guys suck. Like they don't have a lot of flight time, even though they're like the same age as me. Like I'd have thousands of flight hours. One of the guys that I flew with on my first mission,

a guy named Vladimir DeZirov, MiG-25 pilot, I think it was a MiG-25 guy. Like 500 hours of flight time, which is like really like a junior guy and a squadron would have. You ask him to do something like, because I'd have them in my airplane, my NASA airplane sometimes,

in the back seat. Guys couldn't fly formation. I mean, it was just, it was wild. So when a U.S. pilot, or I think any operator in the military, when the bullets start flying and you're like, you know, notch down a little bit and your like abilities, we're still able to get the job done. I think that's the difference between us and a lot of these other, you know, a lot of these other countries.

I want to ask you about J.D. Vance at the risk of changing the subject. you served with Vance in the Senate. What's the difference between J.D. Vance, the senator, and J.D. Vance of Vice President. A lot. A lot has changed. I was not on any committees with J.D. And often with our colleagues, you get to know the ones that you serve on committees with a little bit better because you spend more time with them. And I never traveled with J.D. But I always felt he was in the Senate.

He was a, you know, reasonable guy. You can work with them on things and enjoyed, you know, the time I've spent with him in the chamber, around the chamber, or, you know, just in doing the job. What I see now after a year of him as a vice president is a guy like most of the people around the president. I think priority number one for them is to please the commander in chief. And that's troubling. I think any organization that is run well is often run by a leader who accepts input. In my case, when I was a commander of the space shuttle a couple of times, I used to require my crew members.

I would tell them, you're required to question my decisions. If you think we should be doing something differently and it affects safety, or mission success, you have to tell me about it. And we're going to talk about it. We're going to figure it out together. And I might change my mind. I might decide, okay, ultimately we got to, especially when shit has happened really fast, you know, sometimes you have to make a really quick decision.

But we're going to do this as a team. I don't get the impression that, you know, well, I mean, I think we all know that this is not run this way. There's one guy in charge, makes all the decisions, doesn't take much input. And that is disappointing. So I've been, I'd say I've been more than a little bit disappointed in not only J.D. Vance, but, you know, Marco Rubio and the people, you know, the people around him in the cabinet. Let me ask you about the Democrats. Do you think your party was prepared for everything Donald Trump was going to do in a second term?

Absolutely not. What were you not prepared for? I mean, I didn't. I mean, I thought Donald Trump 2.0 was going to be more challenging than Donald Trump 1.0. But, you know, we did not see, I did not see coming like the weaponization of DOJ in the way he has done this. Or just the amount of, you know, sending the military into U.S. cities and ice and expanding the size of. of ICE dramatically and the funding and the violation of people's constitutional rights, due process rights, you know, warrantless searches, going after people's freedom of speech, freedom of the press

would happen last week with the reporter from the Washington Post. Hannah Natinson. Yeah, I didn't see. I didn't think Donald Trump would be stepping over what I would consider like red lines outside of his constitutional authority as a president. I mean, we don't have kings in this country. This isn't a dictatorship. We're a country of laws. I mean, just the violation of the rule of law. And then doing things counter to what he campaigned on, you know, with regards to how he's, you know, using the military and putting people in harm's way when they don't have to be in harm's way. You know, it's hard enough

to serve in the military. And we all sign up for it, right? We know it's a dangerous job. We get it. I think you need a commander-in-chief that, you know, understands our service members and the role and the mission a lot better than Donald Trump does. Let's say the Democrats take the House in November or even the Senate. Why would that restrain Trump, given the fact that he's mostly ignored Congress so far? Yeah, I think he'll continue to try to ignore it. But when you have control of the House or the Senate, you know, we sometimes say having the gavel, you can call witnesses, you can subpoena witnesses, you can subpoena documents, you can set the agenda, you can investigate, you can also have, when you have the votes, you can, you have levers

that you can use to compel the president to do things. Of course, we expect him to try to ignore as much, because he doesn't operate within any kind of boundaries. But it would be nice, and it would be really helpful, and there's a lot we can do if we have those levers of democracy, which means winning the House and or the Senate. How much do you think you can restrain him,

though? I mean, listen, Doge, ICE, so many, Venezuela, so many things have happened without the explicit blessing. What he's not going to get is the money he wants for, you know, certain things and certain programs,

if he's operating unlawfully, that's the power you have. It's power of the purse. That resides in the House of Representatives. It starts in the House of Representatives. And then we have a role in the Senate. That's, it's huge. Since the Democrats lost the 2024 presidential election, of course, there's been

the requisite soul searching. What issue do you look at from 2024 and say, we as a party need to talk about this differently than we did? Well, I think we need to be focused on the things that the American people care most about. And I think a lot of people care, they care a lot about a lot of things. But, I mean, what, you know, when often you're working, a couple people, you know, people are working two jobs, trying to get their kids to school. You know, I saw this in my own parents.

I grew up in New Jersey. My parents were both police officers. We didn't have a lot of money. I remember my mom sitting at the kitchen table with the trying to figure out which bills to pay that month. That's the reality for more people today. 50% of Americans right now are having a hard time affording food right now. 50%. So we should have been focused on like what do the American people care about day to day more, like a lot more. And that's the cost of things. So there are personal economics and their safety.

I think health care is, you know, crosses both over those. So like health care costs personal safety. A lot of the other stuff is just like, you know, background noise. And I think that we're going to we're doing a better job now, you know, because we realize we lost a very consequential election. We put a guy who's been convicted of, what, 34 felonies back in the White House. He won that election. I mean, I'm not, unlike what Donald Trump says about 2020, you know, I stick with the facts, right, and the data. Donald Trump won. The American people decided he was the better option. But, you know, now we're at a point where we've got to be able to meet the American people where they are, talk to them about the issues that they care about, and then having a plan for how are we going to fix this? How are we going to make it better for them? How are we going to bring down costs? How are we going to get out of this horrible situation that Donald Trump put us in with tariffs that are attacks on the American people?

Because it's not like a switch. You know, if you look historically, tariffs come on very quickly. They go off very slowly because you have to work out an agreement. If you just drop your tariff on a country, it doesn't mean they're going to drop the reciprocal tariff that they put on against you. So we need to have a plan to how are we going to make the economics of the American family, hardworking American families better? How are we going to expand health care coverage for millions of Americans that can't afford it anymore because Donald Trump decided to give a big tax cut to billionaires and build this

giant army of ice agents. That had to be paid for. He partially paid for it by making health care unaffordable for millions of people. In my state, it's like 300,000 people. And, you know, so we've got to fix that. And then we have to address issues that affect American safety. You know, crime. My parents are both cops. I'm a, you know, supporter of the police. But we've got to do it in a way that respects people's constitutional rights. I want to ask you about immigration because polling data is very interesting on this. There's a new New York Times Sienna poll out this morning that says 63% of respondents disapprove of how ICE is doing his job versus just 36% approving. But then if you look at a Wall Street Journal poll from over the weekend, people still say they trust Republicans

more on immigration and the border than they do Democrats, often by big margins. So what's the right democratic message on immigration. Well, I think the point, the important point there is in the Wall Street Journal poll, it had the word border in there. And in the four years of Joe Biden as president, I spent a lot of time arguing with the White House and home insecurity, Ali Meorgas, about the policies of the Biden White House with regards to the border. It was chaos.

it was out of control. They needed to do a better job. It took them way too long. They finally, at the very end, in the last like six months, got to a place where it was much better. These policies made sense. You couldn't ask for asylum between ports of entry, CBP1 app where you can schedule an appointment. There were like controls with how they shut down between ports of entry. So that was starting to work, but it was too late. and the narrative was that the Biden administration really sucked at border security because they did. I was able to get them to add some things at the southern border. That's a whole different thing than internal immigration enforcement, which this administration now,

what ICE is doing in these cities, they are violating the rights of U.S. citizens. and people who are here legally, who have legal asylum claims, they've even deported, you know, people who have served in the military. I saw a story the other day about a guy who served eight years. He's been deported. So those are two separate things. And I'll give this administration some credits, some of the steps they took at the border, you know, have worked. but what they are doing in places like Minneapolis and other cities, it's outrageous and it's wrong and it has to stop. Last week, you introduced legislation with your fellow Arizona Senator Ruben Gallego to limit the ability of ICE agents to wear masks. When's the right time for an ICE agent to wear a mask? Well, first of all, why are they dressed like that?

You remember when I was a kid, police officers, like my dad and my mom, had a blue uniform. with a badge and their name, and it was all rather inviting. You could go up to them and you can talk to them. Now we have federal law enforcement, ICE, that are dressed like special operators in the military. What's that for? They're not going up against al-Qaeda, ISIS, fighting Russians in the streets. What do they need all that stuff for? It's intimidation.

And part of the intimidation, part of their practice is put on a mask. Now I can intimidate somebody, I really can intimidate somebody because they have no idea who I am. I'm not wearing a name tag. I'm wearing this military helmet and fatigues and, you know, wearing my bulletproof vest on the outside. They don't need to be doing this. It is to intimidate the American people. We've seen this in the playbook. It's right out of the playbook.

And it's, that organization, ICE, needs some serious reform. I mean, from the top down, bottom up, whatever you call it, it also needs to be right-sized. In the big, beautiful bill, as Trump calls it, gave them another, you know, $100 billion. This is an agency that has a annual budget in the range, I think, of like $11 billion. and between now in 2029, they added, here's another $100 billion of taxpayer money, by the way. Money that you could argue was used to help people with their health care. You know, people in my state don't have health care anymore because Donald Trump wanted to throw another $100 billion and give big giant tax cuts. So that needs to all be rained in.

A book came out recently called 2024 that described your vetting as a possible running mate for Kamala Harris two years ago. And a Harris advisor was quoted in that book saying that you were quote unquote boring. Do you consider yourself boring, Senator? I don't know. Your listeners can decide. And, you know, I'm an engineer. I'm a Navy pilot. I was a test pilot.

I was an astronaut. not. You know, I, I approach things from the standpoint of, hey, what's the right thing to do? I believe in science. I believe in engineering. I believe in innovation. I believe in the power of the American people to accomplish really hard things in a way no other country can. I'm not a performer. I'm not a politician. You know, I'm not, you know, some of these other people you see, you know, out there that look like they're acting and playing a role, you know, playing, you know, somebody that you might see in a movie doing one of these jobs. That ain't me. You know, if you want to try to solve a problem, you know, and it's like a problem that involves like a hard problem that involves

science or engineering. I'm your guy. If you want a performance, you got to go somewhere else. It brings us to an interesting question because I think there's going to be a debate within the Democratic Party, not just about who's going to lead the party in 2028, but how they're going to communicate. Some would say, we need to communicate like Trump and his allies do in the sense of always being online, quote tweeting your enemies, trying to win the attention economy at all times. And some would say, let's try to go back to some kind of pre-Trumpian vision of political communication. How do you see that question? Well, I think it's different for different people, right?

I think it's important for people who get these jobs. By the way, a job I never really wanted to begin with. I wanted to be the guy to walk on Mars. I failed at that. I find myself here just because of circumstances. I think everybody needs to be kind of authentic to themselves. I'll tell you what I'm doing. I'm doing things a lot differently than I did.

And I'm not changing me, but I am spending a lot more time and effort trying to reach people where they are. I did a, not a podcast, but I did like an interview in a coffee shop with a woman a few days ago in Phoenix, who is a content creator influencer in the crafting space. Okay. I mean, I didn't really know those people existed.

This is like knitting and crocheting. And I'm in this coffee shop talking to her about a little bit about crafting, which I know nothing about. But then we started talking about some other things. You know, some of it was like movies, but some of it was like, you know, Things that, like, I think that matter. So I did in my first four years in the United States Senate, I bet you could count on one or two hands the number of podcasts I did in four years. Now I do that number sometimes in a week. I don't know about this week. You know, maybe I did a

couple, but in a month, certainly, what I did in four years before. So I'm going to places and trying to communicate with people to find them. Not everybody is watching CNN and Fox News and MSNBC. Actually, you know, if you're younger, very few. And then on top of that, I'm trying to just tell people what I think about issues. Like I'll pick up my phone. I'll record a video. We might edit it. We might not. We might just post it. But I'm not doing what like you say is like quote tweeting my, you know, political opponents and trying to come up with the snarkiest thing to say, because that's not me. I think it works for other people. You're going to run for president two years?

I have not made a decision. CNN says you're thinking about it. What form is your thinking taking? Well, this would be, I think for anybody, you know, the most consequential, one of the most consequential decisions they ever make. For me, I think it needs to be the right person at the right time. I don't know where we're going to be a year or a year and a half from now. But I'm going to give it a lot of thought.

And, you know, if I decide that it seems like the right thing to do and, you know, my wife is on board and my kids, I also have a twin brother, by the way. You do. I mean, does he, like, automatically get a job on, like, Saturday Night Live, you know? I bet he gets a guest shot. Right. I could see him doing something with Jimmy Fallon maybe. Is this the presidential candidate? Right.

Right. What do you think the 2028 election should be about? I think it should be about the things, how people are hurting. You know, right now today, you know, what is it like? 1% of the American people own a third of the net worth. And 50 people, 50 individuals, own the same amount as the bottom half of the country. People are poor. They cannot afford a place to live.

A couple months ago, I took my 30-year-old daughter to the Naval Air Station at Patuxet River, Maryland. Southern Maryland. It's where I lived when she was born. She's 30 today. I was 30 then. And I knocked on the door, the house that we lived in. She lived there until she was one and a half. She doesn't remember it.

The guy I sold the house to, Navy veteran, retired captain like me, he was there. He was really excited to see me. I didn't call ahead of time, just knocked on the door, showed us around the house, went into the backyard, my four-year-old granddaughter was there, my son-in-law was there. We spent like 30 minutes with this guy. We get in the car. My daughter immediately says to me, she says, Dad, I don't understand this. You were 30 in the Navy, and you were able to afford that house in that neighborhood at the end of a cul-de-sac, a four-bedroom house? Now, my daughter's done everything right,

and my son-in-law too. That is out of reach for them. Like, we have created an economy here that the winners are the rich. The wealthiest people do really, really well. In the 1960s and 70s, a house cost about two to two and a half times annual income. That number today is six and a half.

Young people can't afford a place to live. It's also reflected in rents, the cost of housing. And where'd that money go? I mean, this 1% owning 33% of the wealth of the country, it wasn't like that 25 years ago. So the rich have more, hardworking Americans have less, and life is unaffordable. And we got to fix it. So that's what the 2028 election needs to be about. How are we going to write the ship?

You know, the ship is, you know, my Navy experience, the ship is about to flip over on us. It's about to capsize. We're going to make sure it doesn't capsize, and we've got to get it. We've got to write it. Finally, because you came here to Ringer headquarters, I'm contractually obligated to ask you some questions about pop culture.

Okay. You were an astronaut. What is the best astronaut movie? Oh, for me, it's by far the Martian. Matt Damon, going to Mars. Because this is what you wanted to do, walk on Mars. No, not because it's what I wanted to do, which is true. I wanted to do that because it is a movie about solving problems with science and engineering.

And that's what I love about the movie. Interesting. Also, the Wright Stuff came out right after you graduated from high school. You're inspired by the right stuff? I read the book when I was in middle school. So more so the book. My brother read, he's a little slow. He's, you know, I'm six minutes older than him.

He read the book while he was in space, I think. That's a decade player. That's a heavy reading for space, but I guess it makes sense. Yeah, and yeah, I was. I really, it got me interested in, you know, that whole career path. How do you do that? what it's like to be a pilot, test pilot. I think before I was 18 years old,

I think I'd flown an airplane twice. And then a little bit more when I was in college, because I went to the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, and we'd have to fly places to get on merchant ships. Maybe I'd flown on a plane 10 times by the time I started flight school at Pensacola, Florida, 1986. By the way, the year the movie Top Gun came out. You know, this is the year that I graduated.

So there you go. Yeah. You were on Celebrity Jeopardy, but you lost to Aaron Rogers. I came in second. I beat the guy from Shark Tank. The guy from Shark Tank. Kevin. Yes.

Kevin O'Leary. Kevin O'Leary. I was ahead. But second on Jeopardy. But I was ahead. I was ahead kind of towards the end. And then Aaron just ripped through one category. And then we all got Final Jeopardy wrong.

If I would have gotten Final Jeopardy, right? If I wasn't where in my contacts, it was a TV. It was one of these visions. final jeopardies and it was on the other side of the room and I have contacts so I can read and it kind of messes up my distant vision. I went and watched. So I got excuses. Yes. You were you were asked to identify two historical figures and they were Harley and Davidson. That is correct. And they were in motorcycles. But here's the thing. If you look at the picture from the other side of the room, it looked like a little boat. It did not look like a motorcycle. And then Aaron thought it was like

Ernst and Young. That was funny. Yeah. So I, you want to hear something really interesting. So I know Aaron and we kind of went on that show sort of like together and I asked him afterwards so what was your strategy going in like overall and he said well I went in there to do everything possible to win and you know what my strategy was like not to look bad to like not to wind up with like zero dollars. It's kind of the difference between, you know, somebody who's like played in the Super Bowl and in my case flying on a rocket ship where I need this to be successful. Mission success is really important. I also have to make sure it doesn't blow up. Like I don't have to, I do not need to do something and make a mistake where I die and everybody else dies and the

billion dollar spaceship is gone. So we had a little bit different strategy. I'm plugging along. I'm answering some questions. And then he rips through that category. I, in the end and I'm like, what happened? It's a very serious way to think about a game show. Right. Aaron Rogers has been on his own political journey. Did you guys stay in touch? I haven't spoken to him in a while.

Yeah. It's been a little while. Yeah. Senator Mark Kelly, thanks for coming on the press box. Well, thank you. Thanks for having me on. All right, that's the press box. I'm Brian Curtis.

Production Magic by Bruce Baldwin. Got a bunch of stuff to put on your radar for next week. We have a very, very busy week at the press box. on Monday, Van Lathen is going to join us to put together what we call the Democratic Dept Chart. All these Democrats who are quietly running for president or might run for president, Van is going to help us put them in order. That's coming on Monday. Later in the week, we're going to have a three-man weave press box with me, David Shoemaker, and Joel Anderson.

Get your questions in right now. Pressbox ringer at gmail.com. We will try to answer as many as we possibly can. And finally, and at long last, we will also have the January issue. David and I talk about in cold blood and the invention of true crime. It's going to be a huge week at the press box. Thanks so much for joining us. We'll be back next week with more lukewarm takes about the media.