INTERVIEW: David Hogg On The Courage It Takes To Fight For Democracy, Gun Reform, Future Leaders + More

Today on The Breakfast Club, David Hogg On The Courage It Takes To Fight For Democracy, Gun Reform, Future Leaders. Listen For More!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Wake that answer up in the morning club.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
Yeah, it's the world most dangerous morning show to Breakfast Club.
Charlamagne the God just hilarious. DJ Envy is not here today,
but we got a very special guest. The vice chairman
of the DNC and the co founder of the March
for Our Lives, David Hodge is here.

Speaker 1 (00:16):
It is like the pig.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
Okay, okay, I always see the two gs, and I
don't know if it's Hodge alcohol.

Speaker 1 (00:23):
Good to see you man.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
You know, I really appreciate a lot of the things
that you've been doing because you are challenging the democratic establishment,
and I just think we need more of that.

Speaker 3 (00:33):
Yeah, I certainly agree.

Speaker 4 (00:35):
I think the fact of the matter is right now,
we have seen last election, we lost voting share with
nearly every single demographic out there, and we also lost
against Donald Trump of all people. Right, And if that's
not a sign that we need to dramatically change, I
don't know what is. So that's really what we're out
here trying to do is help to elevate a new
generation and also make sure that nobody feels like, you know,

(00:56):
that they can just be in their position of power forever,
because ultimately the democracy last I checked, right, and it's
about making sure that we have the best representation possible
in every district.

Speaker 2 (01:05):
Do you feel like the democratic establishment uses young activists
as mascots more than partners.

Speaker 4 (01:11):
Certainly, at times it can't happen. I mean, I know
for a fact when I started running for this position,
you know, there were people who were certainly resistant who
I ended up talking to a lot of the time.
That was actually one of my favorite parts about running
for this position, because when you're running to be a
vice chair, you have to call people and obviously earn
their vote, and one of my favorite parts about it

(01:33):
was talking to the people who at first did not
want to vote for me at all. I mean, there
was one person who I talked to who actually said,
in one of my first calls that I made to
ask for the support, that I'd never talked to this
person before this that said that I should not do this.
I cannot win, and that there was absolutely no pathway
to victory for me, and that they would not vote
for me. That was the first call that I had,

(01:53):
very welcoming, right But what I said to them was like,
I understand that you're not in a position where you
feel like you're not gonna be able to suppor me,
But ultimately I care a lot about the constituency group
that you represent, so I want to keep talking to
you because even if you don't vote for me, I
do care about what you care about. And ultimately they
ended up coming around and supporting me and being a
huge supporter as well.

Speaker 2 (02:12):
And you were a survivor of the Parkland shooting, with
that would spark you know, the thought to get into politics.

Speaker 4 (02:19):
Yeah, I mean before this, I wanted to be a
journalist because I wanted to scare the crap out of
politicians that I thought were corrupt as hell and didn't
do anything. Ultimately, but I realized after Parkland, when my
classmates and I mobilized. For people that may not remember,
we had one of the largest school shootings in American
history happen at my high school in Parkland, and my
classmates and I were obviously devastated after that, but I

(02:42):
would say just as much as that we were furious
because we grew up hearing from our politicians their thoughts
and prayers over and over again after these shootings, but
they weren't really doing anything right.

Speaker 3 (02:53):
I was.

Speaker 4 (02:53):
I think I was in middle school when Sandy Hook happened.
I wasn't even alive when Columbine happened.

Speaker 3 (02:57):
That's how long this has been going on for.

Speaker 4 (03:00):
And we went out there and we didn't say go
out and vote for Democrats or Republicans necessarily. We said,
go out and vote for more religis leaders that represent
you and your values right. And what we saw was
one of the largest youth photo turnouts in American history.
We took back the House. And what we saw as
well is after Parkland, we didn't go out there, even
though there was a lot of the polsters and consultants
and pundits that brought the Democratic Party to the place

(03:22):
that it is right now, who told us, no, you
can't talk about taking on the NRA, the organization that
stops these gun laws from changing a lot of the time, insanely,
you can't talk about banning assault weapons because that's too unpopular.
Because this is Florida, it's a Republican state. Gun laws
get weaker here because we did the opposite of what
all those purported experts told us to do. We actually
did change gun laws in Florida.

Speaker 1 (03:41):
Yeah, because you're not fixing the problem if you don't
go after.

Speaker 4 (03:43):
Exactly, you have to address it. And because of that,
we raised the aged buy a gun to twenty one.
For context of the shoot at my high school. He couldn't
buy a handgun from a federally licensed dealer because he
wasn't twenty one yet, but he could purchase an AR fifteen.
And then we passed a red flag law that can
disarm people that are risked themselves and others. That has
been used over nineteen thousand times in the state of

(04:03):
Florida to disarm people that, for example, threaten to shoot
up a high school or harm their intimate partner, you know,
and thousands of lives have been saved from that. And
what I learned from that experience is that it's actually
summed up well by Dolores Erta, who I asked one
time at a protest. She's a major civil rights activist
obviously and later in the farm workers who have been

(04:24):
amazing person. I asked her, what is the most important
thing that you need to tell any young person or
activist that wants to make change that they need to know?
And what she said to me is it doesn't matter
whether or not the change is actually possible. It's whether
or not you can make people believe that the change
is possible more than anything. And that's what we did
after Parklyn, and I think what we're trying to do
now is take that generation of young people who have

(04:47):
been let down in so many ways by their political system,
whether it's through gun violence inside of school or outside
of school, whether it's the housing crisis, the student debt crisis,
are so much more, and show them that there's a
new generation of people coming in. What are people like
Congressman Maxwell Frost. I don't know if you know this person.
He is the youngest member of Congress. He started he
was working for March for Our Lives while I was

(05:07):
in college, and he called me up and he said
he wanted to run for Congress. And I said, that's awesome,
But you know you're twenty four, right, You have to
be twenty five to get elected to Congress. And Maxwell,
do you know he didn't come from some super fancy background.
His parents aren't super wealthy or anything like that. He's
just a normal person. And when he was running, he
had to uber drive from nine pm to two am

(05:28):
every night while running for Congress, and he was running
against two former members of Congress, one of whom was
a headge fund manager while they were a member of Congress.
Not a conflict of interest at all, right, And then
the other one had committed tax run while they were
in Congress. And Maxwell's written off by the establishment so much.
They said, you know, he's a great person, but he
can't win. He can't raise that kind of money. And
we helped him raise. I helped him raise about four

(05:50):
hundred thousand dollars in his first two quarters. But the
thing is the most important thing that somebody needs to
run for office is the will, the grit, and the
determination to get elected. But they also need a substantial
amount of fun in order to get elected. And far
too many young people with that griten determination struggle to
get there. And that's why we do what we do
with leaders we deserve. Because Maxwell ended up with that
determination and that support, becoming the youngest member of Congress,

(06:13):
that helps us pearhead an effort to get the Biden
administration to aggress to address gun violence in a more
substantial manner. And shortly after I graduated from college, I
found myself sitting in the rose Garden at the White
House with Congressman Maxwell Frost, who I had just I
literally hired from my freshman dorm room, introducing the President
of the United States to create something called the Office

(06:35):
of Gun Violence Prevention that helped coordinate the federal government's
response to gun violence. And they oversaw about a twenty
five percent reduction in gun homicides over the course of
about three years from that work. And that's because the
pressure that Maxwell helped to put on. But imagine if
we had thirty Maxwell's in Congress.

Speaker 5 (06:51):
David, going back to the shooting, you were just seventeen
when that happened, right, and I can only imagine, like,
what was I know you said you guys were furious,
But what is something from that day? What do you
remember most about that data sticks with you today?

Speaker 4 (07:15):
I think what I remember most was just the sense
of anger that I had at what had happened. But
it was more righteous indignation, kind of like the injustice
of what had happened. Because I had spent the past
four years in my speech and debate classes, studying, you know,
arguing about gun control, for example, and having to argue

(07:38):
on both sides of it, both for and against it.
You don't get to decide which side you're arguing on,
you have to argue on both. And I was frustrated
because I felt like I maybe myself and my classmates
could have done something before this because of what we
knew from that education that we did it, that could
have potentially prevented it. So that's a lot of what
I think about, and of course, to the fear that

(08:00):
one has when my sister was just fourteen years old
that day and she lost four friends, that's really what
I was thinking about. Was for the first time in
my life, I I, you know, there wasn't anything that
I could do to help my sister feel better other
than to try to stop this from happening to other people.
And that sense of helplessness is really what I hold

(08:21):
on to. But I also remember that the friendship and
camaraderie that my classmates and I and the parents and
teachers and other people that we worked with had in
order to hold these politicians' feet to the fire. Because
if there's anything that I learned from that experience, when
I originally went out and started talking about it, I
wasn't doing it as an activist. I was doing it
as a journalist because I wanted to talk about what

(08:42):
happened that day. But I soon realized it wasn't gonna
be enough to do that, because you can't just talk
about what's wrong. Yeah, you got to make it better
and say what needs to be done right and journalists
often can't do that. And what's an even better way
of scaring? I like to say, Charlaine, the the only
good politician is a scared politician that is afraid of

(09:02):
losing their job rightly. And we need a lot more
of that. And what's a lot better to do a
lot better of a way of doing that than just
writing a bad story is running somebody against them or
having a massive jet youth voter turnout that helps to
defeat the NRA. And that's just what my generation did
in twenty eighteen. People told us, you young people are great,

(09:24):
you're really inspirational, but you don't vote, that's the problem.
And we said, okay, watch us. So we did, and
we ended up defeating more NRAY backed incumbents in the
US House than ever before in American history. And in
the time sense, we actually passed just fu' all day,
the first federal gun law in thirty years as well.
And it's not nowhere near enough. There are still people

(09:45):
every day that live in fear of gun violence, students
that live in fear of gun violence. And let we
have to be clear too, what happened in Parkland is
horrifying and should never happen again. But most of the
young people that are dying from gun violence aren't dying
in school, and they aren't getting nearly enough attention. And
we need to make sure that we're providing a holistic
solution so that kids don't feel in danger on their
way to school or inside of their classroom at the

(10:06):
same time. But not only just focus on one or
the other, but focus effectively on both.

Speaker 2 (10:10):
Have you encountered more resistance from Democrats or Republicans when
trying to push real.

Speaker 3 (10:15):
Reform in which sense in terms of reform just a
reform period.

Speaker 4 (10:20):
I mean, honestly, I think a lot of the challenge
is that, I think the resource that our party lacks
more than anything, it's not cash. We certainly are good
at raising money, right The resource that we lack is courage.

Speaker 3 (10:31):
In my opinion, I.

Speaker 2 (10:31):
Agree, I think that's the one strategy Democrats have not tried.

Speaker 4 (10:34):
And exactly what kills me about that is that think
about all the most prolific things that our party has
helped to usher in in the past, right, whether it's
the social security system, right, Medicaid, or Medicare, which now
are getting cut, of course, in part because some of
our members of Congress literally passed away in office and
that vote very likely would not have gone through.

Speaker 3 (10:54):
That just went through.

Speaker 4 (10:55):
That is going to cut billions of dollars in funding
from medicaid and so much much more. And what I think,
what I'm always coming back to is what those people
said to us after Parkland, which is, you can't talk
about this because it's too bold, it's too out there,
it's too much. You need to add, you need to
be very incremental.

Speaker 1 (11:16):
Who was saying that Democrats are bold?

Speaker 4 (11:19):
I mean it was a lot of polsters and consultants
and other people on the Democratic side saying, you don't understand, Uh,
this is too controversial, you can't push for this. What
we did, though, is because we actually spoke authentically about
what we actually believed and went out there and said
this is what needs to happen. We got Republicans in
our state, which was a Republican trifecta on the defense,
and we changed gun laws and saved lives. But imagine

(11:41):
if we didn't have that courage. Imagine if we listen
to those people that said that we can't over and
over again.

Speaker 3 (11:46):
Right.

Speaker 4 (11:46):
I think part of the reason why I would say
one of the last times that we were the strongest
as a party was shortly after Barack Obama was elected.
And I think part of the reason we had such
a massive wave wasn't just because of the recession that
we just went through, but it was because it wasn't
because he had a message of we can't. We can
exactly And that is the most powerful force that we

(12:06):
need to tap into. Is we need to reignite the
American people's vision of what kind of country we could
be ultimately right, and not just talk about how we're
against Donald Trump, of course we are, but talk about
what are we trying to build as an alternative right.
And what I think about is, Alex Charlatanne, I'm not
a Democrat because I think that we're God's greatest gift
or we're perfect by any means, right, It's because I

(12:28):
believe in the party that we can be, and I
believe in what we have done as a party in
those moments when we did have courage, when we passed
the Affordable Care Act so that people didn't get kicked
off their insurance for a pre existing condition. That's why
my father, when he got diagnosed with early on said
Parkinson's disease, didn't get kicked off in his insurance. And
then my family didn't go bankrupt because we had the
Social Security system that he paid into throughout his life

(12:52):
to support him and his family should he get the
unfortunate consequences of having a life altering thing like that.
But what I also think about is how I ended
up in Parkland in the first place. And that's because
when my dad was diagnosed with Parkinson's and faced an
early medical retirement, we very likely wouldn't be able to
continue to afford to live in California, where we lived
at the time, because of the housing crisis out there.

(13:14):
That's not because of Republicans, right, That's because of Democrats.
And then we moved to Florida, and I loved the
consequences of Republicans failure to address gun safety. So I
want to make sure that not only are we defeating Republicans,
but we're not just defeating them to defeat them, but
we're actually doing something with that power to address the
housing crisis, to address gun violence, and ensure just more recently,

(13:37):
when my dad passed last September, I'm sorry to thank you.
When my dad passed last September, I was reminded of
how much more work we have to do because when
he was on his deathbed, despite being a Navy helicopter
pilot with full VA benefits and a medically retired FBI agent,
his cost of care monthly for at home care was
nineteen thousand dollars a month. I had to make a

(13:59):
spreadsheet to figure out how long my family could afford
to keep my dad alive despite all of those things.
And the only reason why we didn't go bankrupt is
because he did not live long enough for that to happen.
And that is an impossible decision that no person in
this country should have to make between caring for a
loved one or going bankrupt, or paying for heat or
paying for insulin, or getting a college degree or not

(14:22):
having a lifetime of debt, for example. That's why I'm
a Democrat, because I know the power of what can
happen when we do have courage, when we fight for
what we actually believe in, and we don't just cower
and say no, we need to do this tiny incremental
thing when hundreds of millions of people are struggling around
the country right now.

Speaker 2 (14:39):
Do you think Democrats are afraid of upsetting wealthy donors
even when the issue is life or death like gun reform.

Speaker 4 (14:46):
When it comes to gun reform, I don't think the
issue is necessarily wealthy donors, To be honest with you,
I think that there certainly are conflicts with that. I
think the bigger issue that I look at is the
fact that we have corporations that are literally giving money
to our politics, that are directly incentivized not to address
the broken healthcare system for example, right that are directly

(15:08):
incentivized to not do all kinds of things that the
American people need. We need our government to fight against
special interests, not be in bed with special interests. That's
why our candidates, when we support them, leaders we deserve,
and the funding that we get to support our candidates,
we get funding from two hundred thousand people around the
country with an average donation of twenty two dollars. We

(15:30):
don't take money from corporations, and our candidates they don't
take money from corporations either, and we say to them
as well, if you take money from corporations, we will
find a different young person to run against you, and
we will primary you to hold you accountable because we
have to reform the campaign finance system, because ultimately that
is the thing that is keeping all these issues exists,

(15:50):
making them exist at the same time, because ultimately, these
politicians are able to stay in their positions of power
because they continue to get funding from the NA, They
continue to get funding from all these special interests. That
stops from making progress and having the courage to adjust
those most substantial issues in the first place.

Speaker 2 (16:05):
Let me ask a question, David, at what moment did
you realize you were more of a threat than an
asset to democratic leadership.

Speaker 4 (16:12):
I wouldn't say that, I would say that I'm still
an asset because I would say that this much is true,
right if you were in democratic leadership. I kind of
have a strange metaphor for this. But if you're in
democratic leadership, it's kind of like being the coach of
a baseball team, right, Like, sure, could you go out
against a group of fifth graders and hit a home run? Absolutely,

(16:32):
But Ultimately, if you can't get other people on base,
right because they can't even swing the bat. Sometimes it's
not a matter of what type of bat they're using,
it's a matter of can they swing to actually get
on base in the first place, And it's a matter
of getting new players. Ultimately, it's not a matter of, oh,
can we just do more and more training. And I
think what we need to do more of in our

(16:52):
own party is, yes, we have to fight back to
defeat Republicans, but we also need to give people something
true and authentic to vote for. Where we're showing people
how the reason you vote for us isn't just so
that we have a majority, it's so that we use
our majority to help you, right, Because if we stuck
with that politics of cowardice, we never would have passed
the Affordable Care Act in the first place. We never

(17:14):
would have passed so many of the most monumental pieces
of legislation then now are helping one hundreds of millions
Americans around the country. So, of course there are challenges
with democratic leadership. But what I would say is, especially
in the case of somebody like a King Jeffreys, let's
get him the majority, so we can see what he
can actually do with that majority in the first place.

Speaker 2 (17:32):
He's not going to do anything I can see. Here's
the thing, and I treat it like anything else. Right,
Like you know how they say money doesn't change you,
It just it just multiplies.

Speaker 1 (17:42):
Whatever you already are.

Speaker 2 (17:44):
More power is not going to change these people. If
you're a coward with no power, you're going to be
a coward with power. We've seen plenty of Democrats who
have power who are still cowards.

Speaker 1 (17:53):
A game ain't gonna do nothing different with power.

Speaker 4 (17:55):
Well, I think if we I think if we have
the right people elected that are out there, are going
to be able. Ultimately, sometimes it's not a matter of
what you want to do when you have to get
elected to those positions within the House. For example, if
we get more people elected that are saying no, this
is not enough, we have to fight harder that we're
we're not just going to stick in our positions of
power forever, and we're going to say to you, for example,

(18:16):
that if we're going to vote for you, this is
what we want to see. Because obviously he has to
be elected to be the majority speaker of the House.
By having some of them some more of those young
people that are on the front lines of these issues
of addressing that I know in those internal deliberations that
it's not so much a matter of what he wants
to do, It's more a matter of if he wants
to get elected. He is going to have to be
able to fight harder, and I know that those young

(18:37):
people will push him to do that, and if they
feel like he's not going to, then they won't vote
for it.

Speaker 2 (18:41):
Have you ever been directly wanted by anyone in the
Democratic Party to stan you leem? I'm like, I'm talking
like I know some people say things publicly, but like
behind the scenes, have they like, really right.

Speaker 1 (19:04):
There?

Speaker 4 (19:04):
Certainly are our real challenges so the work that we
are doing. But I'm not going to let that stop me.
You know, I wouldn't say necessarily that it's like somebody
is directly coming to me and saying if you don't
stop this, this is going to happen to you, or
something like that. But they that's not how a lot
of these things work inside of DC. A lot of
the time, it's not necessarily necessarily an overt threat. It
is saying it is essentially a tacit threat that we

(19:27):
hear a lot of the time knowing that if X
thing happens, then why could happen to you?

Speaker 3 (19:31):
Right?

Speaker 1 (19:32):
Why not call it out? Though? Why not?

Speaker 4 (19:34):
Because ultimately it is what I care more about is
when there are people that go against me, whether it
was for example, in the vice chair race, I know
the power for my own work and gun violence prevention
of being a bigger person working towards victory. And ultimately,
when you do that, a lot of those people start
to come around. Because a lot of the time in DC,

(19:56):
we have a lot of wind socks that go just
whichever way the wind is blowing, right, whichever side that
they think is going to win. And I believe in
the politics of being able to reconcile those differences and
work together despite what people say. Because what's even more powerful,
Charlot Mane, is that when when somebody comes out and
tries to go overtly against you, right, and they know
that they did that to you, but they see that
you start to win, and that's ultimately what they care

(20:17):
most about. Then if you don't go out there and
start calling them out publicly, one it's not nearly as divisive,
and two, it shows that you're trying to be a
real leader, and ultimately they oftentimes feel guilty about it
and they want him try to make up for it
by working to help you because they want to be
on the side of winning, and ultimately that's what we're
trying to do here.

Speaker 3 (20:36):
If that makes sense.

Speaker 5 (20:37):
How do you respond to people to say that your
work is too political?

Speaker 1 (20:41):
And what could you?

Speaker 3 (20:42):
Could you elaborate a little bit?

Speaker 5 (20:43):
I mean, because you know, obviously, like to the point
that he said, how.

Speaker 2 (20:48):
Like you don't really Yeah, you don't like you're you're
doing this for selfish reasons and not because you actually
care about you know, the whole party if they advance
your political career.

Speaker 3 (20:58):
No, no, no, So what I'll say.

Speaker 4 (21:00):
When I was eighteen, I said that I wanted to
run for Congress because I thought that would be the
best way to make change. But I realized when I
was working with people like Maxwell and other young people
around the country how hard it is to raise money
and get the resources to get elected. Because of course,
courage is that resource that we lack the most. But
those courageous people they need cash in.

Speaker 3 (21:22):
Order to get elected.

Speaker 4 (21:24):
And I could be one person myself to go out
there and maybe I get elected to Congress, but ultimately,
what is more, what is going to be more beneficial
for the future right One, I often do get physically threatened,
not necessarily by Democrats, necessarily by any means, but by
a lot of people who don't agree with the things
that I say about strengthening gun laws. My family and

(21:45):
I we got probably over a thousand death threats after
the shooting, I would say, between online and directly in
the mill. My house got swatted as well. And what
I frankly have to think about is that I can't
just be one person doing this right, And there's a
whole movement of people out there that are doing this,
a whole movement of young people that have gone through

(22:06):
these school shootings. And what I want to help do
is I don't want to just be one vote that's
out there. I want to help bring in a generation
that is truly representative of our generation and not just
what you know, somebody who's able to raise as much
money as possible to get elected looks like. And that's
what we're trying to do with this is look at
all the candidates that we supported last cycle, where we
helped to elect the youngest person and the Georgia Legislature. Ever,

(22:27):
it's a seventh grade algebra teacher, right. Look at the
person who we elected, Dante Pittman in North Carolina, who
helped to break the Republican supermajority out there. Look at
people like Nadarius Clark in Virginia who broke the Republican
majority in the House and help pass all this stuff.
So the reason why I'm doing this is because I
want to help bring in I don't want to just
walk through that door myself and close it behind me.

(22:47):
I don't want to just keep the door open. I
want to take the door off the damn hinges and
enable it so that future young people don't need to
have the door held open for them in the first place.
What they need to do that, though, is they need
the funding to get elected and make sure that they
have their right value so that they're able to reform
our campaign finance system. Because what I look at this
as ultimately is an insurance policy for the gun safety movement.

(23:11):
Where President Biden's generation, they didn't go through school shooter drills,
but they went through a different type of drill. They
went through nuclear bomb drills, and they went on to
pass some of the largest arms reduction treaties in human
history to limit those nuclear weapons. And I think that's
important because they felt the anxiety of what it was
like to be told by your government just hide on
your desk to survive a nuclear bomb and the epic

(23:34):
failure of leadership that that is. And I believe for
the difference from our generation is that the bomb is
going off multiple times a year, absolutely right, So let's
get them elected so that they can lead, like Congressman
Frost boldly on this instead of me just being one vote,
because it isn't about me. It's about our generation and
the story of are we going to continue having conversations

(23:56):
like this in the future where school shootings remain in
the headlines, and gun violence remains in the head lines,
and so many issues that we should not have to
deal with in the richest country in human history remain
in the headlines, or we're going to leave them where
they belong in history books.

Speaker 2 (24:08):
Give me some other names, because you know you keep
mentioning in Maxwell Frost, who do you think is the
voice of the Democratic Party, or who do you think
should be the voice of the Democratic Party, Or is
there multiple voices.

Speaker 4 (24:17):
Well, I think one there's going to be multiple voices, right.
I think one of the great things about our party
that also creates some challenges is, look, we are not
a cult, right.

Speaker 2 (24:26):
We can can't tell in recent years.

Speaker 4 (24:28):
Well, sometimes I understand what you're saying, certainly given some
of the responses that I've gotten to this, but ultimately
we are not a party with somebody like Donald Trump
at the top that says you have to believe every
single thing right here or else you were excommunicated and
we're going to try to destroy your life necessarily.

Speaker 6 (24:43):
It's not really that's true, David Well, I've looked at
the way people people would really get upset with you
if you had anything negative to say about President Biden
when he was the one that we should have been
speaking out about.

Speaker 4 (24:55):
The most right, And I under I completely agree with you. Actually,
I think one of the challenges in that regard that
we have to address in our politics is that we've
created a culture where people are told repeatedly what they
want to hear instead of what they need to hear. Right,
And what I believe happened in that regard is, look,

(25:15):
when you're in the White House and I've seen this
in different ways, either in the White House or in
other places. You want to keep your job, and the
best way to do that is ensure that you get
this person reelected again. And I think what happens far
too often in our politics is that people get too
comfortable and they just tell people what they want to
hear instead of what they need to hear, over and
over and over and over again. And frankly, part of

(25:37):
why I'm doing this is because what I met with
President Biden in twenty twenty three for an hour in
the Oval Office, and one of the things that that
happened to you, well, it was a good meeting, and
it was it was after he created the Office of
Gun Violence Prevention at the White House that saw about
the twenty five percent reduction in gun homicides around the country.

(25:57):
Part of the challenge is, though you're not gonna hear
about the shooting. That doesn't have right. But I was
meeting with him in that regard.

Speaker 1 (26:04):
And did you see the decline in him then?

Speaker 4 (26:06):
So that was one of the challenges is I didn't
see it personally. And what I wish I had told
him though, because he asked me, how do I win
back younger voters. What I wish I had told him, which,
of course I would have been left out the room
if I said this was that he shouldn't run for
office again.

Speaker 3 (26:23):
I know, but that's what needed to be said.

Speaker 1 (26:25):
I was saying that everybody was so mad at me.

Speaker 4 (26:27):
And but that's part of the problem is we need
to have a more open conversation about these things, because
we also created an environment where people felt like they
were excommunicated if they dared to say anything about it.
And I to some extent, I understand people were afraid
about potentially re electing Donald Trump, but ultimately look at
where we ended up.

Speaker 3 (26:43):
Right.

Speaker 4 (26:44):
We need to build a culture inside of our party
where we are telling people what they need to hear
and not just what they want to hear. That's what
I did when I ran for vice chair. When I
ran for this position, I said, you know what I'm
not going to do. I'm not going to be a politician.
I'm not going to contort myself into some bullshit pretzel
of whatever you want to see if some bullshit mirage
of you know. When they asked me, should Joe Biden
have dropped out? I said, yes, he should have obviously,

(27:07):
And then when they asked me why we lost the election,
I said, why do we lose the election? Voters told
us two things. They said, prices are too high and
Joe Biden is too old. And we said to them,
with a power of two billion dollars behind us, no
he's not, Yes he is. And then we said, no
they aren't. Look at the stock market.

Speaker 1 (27:24):
And if a majority of people don't have fucking stuff.

Speaker 4 (27:26):
Exactly, and if you tell people not to believe their
eyeballs or their wallets, you're gonna lose them. And I
think what we need to build in the party is
a culture of addressing the realities that people are actually
going through and what they're actually feeling, not just what
a chart is telling us that they should be feeling,
but actually listening to them. And what we're here to
do is build that culture, regardless of whether or not

(27:47):
people like it or not, because it needs to say
if you aren't gonna listen and understand that, frankly, sometimes
people should not be in these positions of power anymore
because the consequences are if you die in office, we
may lose a vote like we just did.

Speaker 3 (28:04):
That's going to.

Speaker 4 (28:04):
Cost billions and billions of dollars and people to lose
their health care because they chose to stay in power
for so long that they literally died there. I mean,
imagine a scenario like this to your point of what
you were talking about, Imagine we had a scenario where
we won, you know, a two seat majority in the House,
we would have already lost it because several of our

(28:27):
members have died in office. That should not be the case.
They need to be. We need to be training up
the next generation and passing down that knowledge and not
sticking around so long that they're just there forever. And
I know that's uncomfortable for some people to hear, and
I certainly get a lot of heat for saying that.
And it's not to say that there isn't you know that.
I don't have respect for those people. They've done incredible

(28:47):
like work and prolific work. But ultimately we have to
figure out how do we train up the next generation
to build the best democratic party possible because I think
what happens is a lot of people don't want to
train up their successor because that is a threat to them.
Because if you can be if you train up somebody
well enough You're going to train them so well that
you could potentially be replaced, and that's scary to them.

(29:09):
But ultimately, this isn't about you. It's about the country.
It's about the party, and it's about what are we
doing not only to defeat Donald Trump? He's look, he's old.
I know, Joe Biden's old. Donald Trump is old too.
I don't know how much longer he's going to be around.
Why do we keep saying defeat Donald Trump? Though he won,
right exactly? So that's what I'm getting at is we

(29:30):
can't just talk about what are we doing to defeat
Donald Trump? What are we doing to defeat him?

Speaker 3 (29:34):
He won?

Speaker 4 (29:35):
What are we doing to defeat what empowered him? Ultimately,
what are we doing to address the fact that right
now he's taking millions and millions of dollars into his
own cryptocurrency that I think it's very likely that foreign
governments are buying to buy favor with him. Right What
are we doing to address the fact that his own
administration is kidnapping students for op eds that they've written.

(29:56):
That's horrifying. And the fact that right now, despite all
of that, that are party's approval rating is that twenty
seven percent should tell us it is an indictment of
our party. My question to the people that don't agree
with this is what is the plan yeah to address
that If it's not new leadership. Everybody loves to say
it's just new messaging, it's just new messaging. The problem

(30:18):
is in DC, the guiding philosophy that guides far too
many of our principles is what pisses off the least
people and what raises the most money. That's not a
winning strategy, because that's what brought us here.

Speaker 2 (30:31):
Congressman Jim Clyburne said that, you know, you know, what
do you want them to do? Give up their life
and you told them to get over get over themselves?

Speaker 1 (30:38):
You what do you mean by that?

Speaker 4 (30:39):
What I was getting at more in particular, is first
and foremost. I think people like Jim Cliburn are incredibly
important figures in our party and have an incredible legacy.
What I was getting out was not specific to him.
What I was getting out was specific to the culture
that we have in the party that I've heard from
many members across the board, which is to say, if
I leave, I feel like my life is over. And
that's why I'm there and I need to be there.

(31:01):
That's not a good enough reason to be in office. Frankly, dude,
right completely, and the congressman collaborator, right, of course. But
the question should be are you the best representative possible?

Speaker 3 (31:13):
And maybe he is.

Speaker 4 (31:14):
Ultimately his voters obviously re elected him, so maybe he is.
But the question that we need to be facing here
is that it ultimately it's not about any single one
of us. It's about this party. It's about what are
we doing to make sure that people that rely on
food stamps aren't having funding cut like we just saw,
What are we doing to make sure that the tens

(31:34):
of millions of people that rely on Medicaid aren't having
Republicans cut funding from that because several of our members
died while in office and that is part of what
enabled them to do that. Because ultimately, we need to
be focused on those several million people and the American
people more than we need to be focused on ourselves.
And I'm not, let me be clear, I'm not saying
that that's specific to Congressman clib Do.

Speaker 1 (31:56):
You regret saying that, like just that choice of words
get over you?

Speaker 4 (31:59):
I think think what I wish I was more specific,
and in that regard is that we have a culture
in our party of saying, like, well, you know, I
feel like my life is over if I stay here forever,
and that's why I'm here, and that's not a good
enough reason of being there. And maybe that's not what
he's maybe that's not what he was trying to say.
In that case, I agree.

Speaker 2 (32:17):
With that, because the American people's life could be over
if you stay too long. Clearly a lot of y'all
have stayed too long, and you know, y'all have been
holding onto those same ideologies, and like you said, that
culture of the Democratic Party has not benefited us. The
thing that bugs me out the most is twenty twenty.
They told us vote for President Biden to stop what
is happening now, and it didn't stop anything. They didn't

(32:39):
fight hard at all when they got in the office
to stop what is currently going on in this country
right now.

Speaker 3 (32:46):
It's horrifying.

Speaker 4 (32:47):
I mean, there were things that I think that we
did do to give them some level of credit. Right
We got the first federal gun law passed in thirty years.
That's pretty prolific. That's part of what resulted in twenty
five percent reduction in gun homicides. It's nowhere near enough
to be clear.

Speaker 2 (32:59):
But I'm talking of regard to stopping authoritarian rule. Oh yeah,
I'm talking about in regard to stopping with somebody, stopping
somebody that you know wasn't going to uphold the Constitution.
They never acted like, well, they talked like Donald Trump
was a threat, but never really acted like yeah.

Speaker 4 (33:16):
And I think what we should have done if if
we genuinely felt that way, we would have we would
have made sure that we were building a culture where
we were telling people what they need to hear, including
the President of the United States, and not just what
they want to hear. And frankly, the fact that I
didn't say that in that meeting with President Biden, it
is one of the biggest regrets that I have and
I will think about almost probably every day for the

(33:36):
rest of my life. Is in those major moments, sure
would the President of listened to me? Probably not, and
I probably would have just been laughed out of the room,
to be honest with you, but at least I would
have told him what he needed to hear and not
just what he wanted to hear. Ultimately, and that is
what we got to change in our party, And what
I'll tell you this much is that comfortable politicians don't change.

Speaker 3 (33:57):
They don't.

Speaker 4 (33:59):
And I think right now there's far too much comfort
in our party in a moment of crisis in our
country with what we're seeing Donald Trump do across the board,
I'm tired of seeing strongly written letters, right.

Speaker 1 (34:10):
Strongly written letters with eight strong questions.

Speaker 4 (34:13):
What I think we need more of is people that
are like Senator Van Holland right, who said, who's a
senator from Maryland that said he didn't just sit on
his hands and say I'm in the minority, I can't
do anything. He said, Donald Trump disappeared one of my
constituents to El Salvador, and I'm going to l Salvador
to talk to him. That's what it looks like. That's
what fighting back it looks like. But it goes beyond

(34:35):
that too as well. It's about an overall cultural shift
in our party because right now, I'm curious what you
guys think of this. If you ask the average American
if the Democratic Party was an animal, guess what the
most common answer.

Speaker 1 (34:50):
Is A cowardly line. You want to take a guess
same cowardly line.

Speaker 3 (34:57):
It's a turtle, a smart.

Speaker 4 (35:02):
You know what it is for Republicans and it's a
shark or alliant. People want somebody who fights for them ultimately,
and that is what kills me about what we're saying
is we are fighting. I do genuinely believe for the
right reasons and for the right people. But for far
too many people, they clearly don't feel like we are
fighting for them ultimately. They don't feel like we're addressing

(35:22):
their real concerns. And what we need to do is
elect people that are there to address those concerns and say,
screw the special interests. We're here to represent you. We're
not here to represent corporations. We're not in Congress to
help you know, an extremely wealthy group of people, like
Republicans are doing right now where they are literally cutting
billions of dollars in funding for Medicaid and food stamps

(35:43):
in order to give a I think there's a five
trillion dollar tax cut to the wealthiest Americans in this country.
They are literally taking from the poorest and most vomitable
members of our country and giving it to the most
affluent and wealthy people. And Donald Trump likes to call
this his big beautiful bill. It should be called the
big bullshit bill. That's what that is ultimately, because that's
not the art of the deal. That's just total bullshit

(36:05):
that he is pushing there.

Speaker 2 (36:06):
And I wonder if Democrats understand, like, you know, when
Chuck Schumer talks about how bad this bill is but
then says he has to support it anyway, do they
not understand how that missed messaging makes me not ever
believe anything that comes out.

Speaker 3 (36:17):
Well, it is awful.

Speaker 4 (36:19):
And what I think we need to do is make
sure that we're better coordinated between the left and the
right hands right where the House and the Senator properly
talking to each other. And also if we do have
to face a tough decision like that, like that's safe
for a second that that Schumer in that position, let's
say like he made the best of two bad bads,
the least bad of two bads. You know, this is right,

(36:42):
the lesser two weeks. But ultimately, when we're in the minority,
unfortunately we don't have the choice of that a lot
of the time.

Speaker 1 (36:49):
But even when they're in a majority, it's like we're.

Speaker 4 (36:51):
Picking and it shouldn't be. To be clear, and I
think the way that we do that it was we
change our cast of characters to make sure that we
are fighting harder and showing that we're going to fight
to elect p people that are like our first endorsed candidate,
actually Senator Robert Peters in Illinois, who actually currently is
in the same Senate seat as Barack Obama was when
he was in the state legislature there, and the reason

(37:11):
why we had him just as an example of what
we need more of to help make sure that we're
pushing our leaders to be better, because leaders are the
consequences of the people that vote for them, right, whether
that is the American people that are voting for them,
or that is the people inside of Congress that are
voting for them. Senator Peters in Illinois, what he did

(37:31):
that was really remarkable to us is it's not enough
just to have the right values. That is obviously the
first and most important thing in terms of fighting to
ensure like he did that he's he ended cash bail
in the state of Illinois, and they built a system
where it's based off of how much of a risk
somebody is to society whether or not they get out,
not whether or not they can afford to get out.
But on top of that, he also did things like

(37:52):
increased tenant protections and made it so that if you
have a mental health crisis and you're insurance companies don't
love to pay for therapy a lot of the time.
So part of what they addressed was prior authorizations for insurance.
What we're looking for people with the right values who
also gedget had done right. That's what I care about ultimately,
And he passed over one hundred and twenty bills through

(38:13):
the legislature and got them signed into law. That is
what we're looking for more of in Congress. People that
have the experience, that have the grit, that have the
determination and the will to get done, and have the
lived experience that far too many members of Congress frankly
only pretend to even know about. And he knows that
himself because unfortunately, at a younger age, he lost his parents,
went through the foster care system, and went on to

(38:34):
still become this prolific leader in the Illinois state legislature.
And I think part of the reason for that is
because he personally knows the consequences of what happens when
we don't lead on these issues and that's what we
need a lot more of in Congress. But it's not
just any young person, to be clear, right, there's lots
of young people who suck. There's lots of old people
who are great. It's not as simple as saying if
you're above a certain age, you shouldn't necessarily be there.

(38:57):
It's about effectiveness, right, And the issue that I take
more breadly speaking with the party right now is that
it feels like we've leaned so much on this culture
of seniority politics that if you just wait for the
most experienced people, that they're going to be the ones
to get things done the best, over and over and
that's what we said over and over and over again.
But that's what got us here. If that was the

(39:17):
best situation for us to lead us out of these moments,
I wouldn't be talking to you right now because this
wouldn't be a problem, right, because Donald Trump wouldn't have
been elected again in the first place. But here we are,
and experience matters. But it has to be effective experience ultimately,
because if you're just there for thirty years and you

(39:38):
don't know how to get things done, that experience doesn't
mean anything.

Speaker 3 (39:41):
Right.

Speaker 4 (39:42):
But if you've been there for three years and you
know how to get things done, that's a lot more
important to me.

Speaker 3 (39:46):
Right.

Speaker 4 (39:46):
So we're not just looking to find any young person.
We're looking to find the best of the best of
our generation to get them elected around the country.

Speaker 2 (39:52):
What advice have owed the progressives given you privately that
contradicts their public message.

Speaker 4 (40:00):
I've heard from a lot of members of Congress that
have thanked me for doing this, even not so young
members of Congress that have thanked me for doing this
and said that this is dramatically needed, but they don't
want to speak out about it because they obviously don't
want to say that some of their colleagues shouldn't necessarily
be there anymore. But look, I'm willing to do that.
I don't care.

Speaker 1 (40:17):
I didn't.

Speaker 4 (40:18):
I didn't get to this position by saying over and
over again, Oh, I'm just gonna conserve my political capital,
and I'm just going to be extremely risk averse. I
know the consequences of what of that type of politics.
My generation knows the consequences of that type of politics
of saying, oh, let's just cower ourselves and negotiate against
ourselves more and more and more and more and more,
to the point that Eddi, it makes us question why

(40:39):
the how are we even there in the first place, right,
because we're not there just to sit in a comfortable chair.
We're there to get out of it and get things
done to show people why they should vote for us,
not just because of how that we're the less bad
of two options, like you talk about, but that were
the best option overall. Right, I'm tired of voting for
the least bad of two options. I want to vote

(41:00):
for the best option. Ultimately, I've got two more questions.

Speaker 2 (41:03):
Would you ever consider helping to start a third party
of Democrats continue ignoring your generation's demands.

Speaker 4 (41:09):
No, because this is not their party. Ultimately, the people
that are trying to you know that are against this.
The Democratic Party doesn't belong to anybody in leadership. It
doesn't belong to me. It doesn't belong to any of
the official members of the DNC, the or the official
leaders of the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party belongs to

(41:29):
the American people and the millions of Democrats that are
elected around the country that we are here to try
to represent as much as possible. So no, I'm not
about to leave and try to start my own party,
because ultimately, this isn't you know, the people that are
against this.

Speaker 3 (41:43):
This isn't their party.

Speaker 4 (41:44):
It's all of our party, and it's a matter of
what type of party do we want to build in
the first place.

Speaker 2 (41:48):
Okay, my last question, I'm just going to throw some
names at you, and because because these people to me
represent what the next generation of Democrats could look like,
I just want to know what your thoughts of them are.

Speaker 1 (41:57):
Governor Wesmore and Maryland.

Speaker 4 (41:58):
So, I think Governor Wes Moore has done a pretty
amazing job. He actually has a really cool program that
I don't think has been talked about very much where
he works. I think it's called like the mid Career Program,
where they'd taken a class of several hundred young people
and put them into different jobs around the state of
Maryland and it really helps get them started in their
lives and their careers and like help turn things around.
And there have even been people that have gone into

(42:19):
this program that that I've heard about that started out
literally homeless that now have gone on to get jobs
and do things like that. So that's great. I love
Governor Wes Moore. I will say this much. If yeah,
I can't. I can't talk at all about the any
potential presidential nominees. I'm not saying that he is or

(42:41):
is not running, but I can't give any opinion specifically
on that. I think people boo to Judge clearly was
a very good Secretary of Transportation given the situation that
we're in right now, and I think I think with
Pete he represents a level of sanity that I think

(43:01):
people are craving right now. They're tired of the chaos
that I think Donald Trump represents a lot of the time.
I don't think people want to have a president that
they have to hear about doing something ridiculous in the
headlines every single day. That is frankly an embarrassment to
our country and internationally as well. So I think Pete
could be great. What I really like about him is that,

(43:24):
and I'm just talking about like future leaders. I'm not
talking about anything about presidential or anything like that. To
be extremely that's generation democratics. What I really like about
him is I think he does an excellent job of
talking to people who don't agree with him.

Speaker 3 (43:38):
Yes, I agree, that is what we need more of.

Speaker 4 (43:40):
When I was actually in college, I joined the shooting club.
As you can imagine, I was very popular there, right,
And I didn't do that because I was super popular.
I did that because I wanted to talk to the
people who disagree with me most. And what I realized
from those conversations, at least on the issue of gun
violence a lot of the time, is that it's it's
not even for a lot of people that there's super
overtly against this, even if they say that they're against it.

(44:03):
A lot of the time, when people don't agree with
something on this, it's because they feel disrespected by you,
they feel unheard, they feel looked down on. And when
you have an actual conversation with them and say, okay,
why do you feel this way? What can we agree on?

Speaker 3 (44:14):
You start making progress with them.

Speaker 4 (44:16):
That's why I've talked to people who've said to me
even crazy things like people who think that the shooting
in my high school didn't happen. Why I've engaged with
and said, obviously, I don't agree with you on that
because they're conspiracy theorists, right, And it's hard for me
to have that conversation, incredibly hard. But I'm not here
to have easy conversations and get nothing done. I'm here
to have hard conversations and help fundamentally change this issue

(44:38):
so that no other generation has to live through it
in the first place. And what I learned from those
conversations is when they say an insults me, or they
say something like I just mentioned, when I respond and
I say, look, I can respect that you don't agree
with me, but I can't accept the fact that you
don't want school shootings or gun violence to continue either.
So to figure out what we can't agree on, even
if it's a small thing. When I do that, at

(45:00):
the end of every single conversation that I've had like that,
without fail, if they continue talking to me, they end
up apologizing and saying I may not agree with you
on everything, but I respect you. And then they'll come
back a lot of the time and say, actually, I've
changed my mind because of our conversation, and I now
support you, and I shouldn't have said that the shooting
at your high school didn't happen, and I was wrong
for that, and I'm sorry. And that is what the

(45:21):
most powerful force to me is is how to turn
that hatred into Hope's shoot. No, I didn't now I
was one of the best shots on the team because
my dad was an FBI agent. But that's what I
think Pete is really good at representing, is helping to
kind of bring people together and talk to the people
that don't agree and explain without compromising his values what

(45:44):
we believe as Democrats, and I think it's really powerful.

Speaker 1 (45:47):
Names govern to Josh Shapiro.

Speaker 4 (45:49):
You know, I think with Josh Shapiro, he has a
huge amount of favorability for a reason in Pennsylvania ultimately,
and you know, I think it's interesting as a swing state.
They have a pretty close state logist as well, and
there's been some great work that they've done on gun
violence as well. Javna Crockett Jasmine Crockett, I love her.

Speaker 3 (46:08):
She is amazing.

Speaker 4 (46:10):
I think that people want to see somebody who fights
and calls out the bullshit. Ultimately. I think that's what
Jasmine does. And we need a hell of a lot
more people that are out there that are willing to
do just that and call people out on their ps
and not say, oh my god, Republicans are going to
criticize me for saying this, screw that, They're going to
criticize you no matter what So what we should be
asking ourselves is what are we really fighting for? Because

(46:30):
we know it matters. And I think Jasmine is, frankly
the type of leader that we're really looking to support
in some senses, right, somebody who is out there that
frankly doesn't give a damn with the other side. At
least the elected Republicans in Congress say that say what
they believe in, and at least you know, even if
you don't agree with her, you know what she stands
for because she makes it very clear. And people are

(46:53):
really craving that right now. They don't want more politicians
that say talking points that it doesn't even feel like
they believe, or you don't even really know what they mean.
They want somebody who's out there that says what they
believe and doesn't care what somebody else thinks about it.
They want that authenticity.

Speaker 1 (47:06):
Govin and Gretchen Wimmer.

Speaker 4 (47:08):
I think part of what was really great with Gretchen
Wimmer and her focus was on infrastructure right people. I
think Democrats need to do a lot more of finding
the issues that nobody likes and addressing them in a
substantial matter. So part of her campaign was addressing potholes, right,
really basic, just saying fix the damn roads.

Speaker 3 (47:28):
We need more of that. Right.

Speaker 4 (47:30):
I want to make sure that if somebody is out
there that when we have democratic cities, for example, that
they should be the most efficiently run, safest and clean
cities in the world. Ultimately that are the best run possible.
And I think part of our strategy for twenty twenty
eight and twenty twenty six needs to be talking about, Okay,
what are we doing to address the fact that it

(47:50):
is incredibly hard for people to pay their rent right
now because rents have gone up so much. What are
we doing to address the fact that our roads are
terrible in far too many places? Because I think the
pathway forward for Democrats is if we're successful. What I
want people to think when they hear the word democrat
is two things competence and integrity.

Speaker 1 (48:10):
Right.

Speaker 4 (48:10):
I want them to know that we get things done
and that we have the integrity to stand behind what
we truly believe in and accomplish it at the end
of the day, whether that's making sure that you don't
go bankrupt because you want to go to the doctor,
or that's making sure that you don't you know, pop
a tire on a pothole, or making sure that you
can actually afford a home ultimately, because the biggest challenges
to those things should not be how it shouldn't be

(48:34):
how expensive it is. Everything is too damn expensive, way
too damn expensive. What we got to figure out is
how do we address the cost of all those things
across the board, because the American dream for those essentials,
the things that we don't have options of buying a
roof over our head, right, health care, insurance, and things
like elder care like for my father, or childcare. Those

(48:56):
things are way too damn expensive and guess what Republicans
are not going to fit them. So the question was
is Democrats needs to be what are we going to
do to fix it? And some of that needs to
be making it easier for people to be able to
buy a house, but it's also about addressing why are
there's so few houses to begin with at the same time,
and not treating it as an either or, but addressing
the demand side and the supply side of it.

Speaker 1 (49:15):
At the same time. Some more names AOC.

Speaker 3 (49:18):
How long do you have?

Speaker 4 (49:20):
I mean, AOC has been a huge inspiration to me
when I because she got elected in twenty eighteen and famously,
you know, I also want to mention she challenged a Democrat, Yes, right.
Imagine if we didn't have AOC right now going out
there and rallying tens of thousands of people. Imagine that, right.

(49:42):
And it wasn't just any Democrat that she challenged, it
was one of the most powerful Democrats in the House.
And frankly, the way that she's been treated simply for
doing that, I find horrible and unacceptable. I think that
she should have been the head of oversight, frankly, so
that she could have gone out there and spoken out
about all this stuff. What I really like about her

(50:05):
is more than anything, that you clearly know that she
believes what she's saying. Absolutely, she clearly believes what she's saying.
And she knows how to communicate on social media because
she grew up with it she's young. And also she
doesn't you know, she's not out there taking money from
special interests. You know, regardless of whether or not you
agree with AOC, at least you can say that she's

(50:26):
not owned by anyone, right, She's not owned by any
special interest or anything like that that's finding her campaign
because she is saying what she believes in at the
end of the day, and I think we need to
help a lot more of that, and we need to
create a culture where if somebody does successfully challenge, you know,
a member like that, that they aren't shut out and
kept out. Because she is a huge asset to our

(50:48):
party that I do not believe is being utilized nearly enough.
And we need to accept the fact that we're going
to have challenges in our own party, sometimes to incumbent Democrats.
That's okay, that's healthy. Competition is a healthy thing. Imagine
if we just said no, you can't do that, you
need to wait your turn over and over again. I
don't think that we'd be in a very good place

(51:09):
right now. So I love her. I think she is
a prolific lader, and we need a lot more people
like her.

Speaker 1 (51:17):
My last name.

Speaker 2 (51:18):
These are people who I believe are the future and
now in the future of the Democratic Party.

Speaker 1 (51:23):
John Stuart, John Stewart, John Stuart.

Speaker 4 (51:26):
So what I love about John is I think he
he and Donald Trump actually have the same greatest strength.
And this is going to sound controversial, is that they're funny.

Speaker 1 (51:37):
Yeah, right, not controversial.

Speaker 4 (51:39):
So I think what's controversial with some Democrats, right, but
I think what happens.

Speaker 1 (51:42):
They don't have a sense of humor.

Speaker 4 (51:44):
Well truly, Yeah, that's a whole nother com Well. I
think John Stewart has a sense of certainly. I think
what happens a lot of the time with Donald Trump
that we don't realize is that people in the America,
in our America, we don't think of authoritarians as funny people.

Speaker 1 (52:04):
Right.

Speaker 4 (52:04):
It's very disarming to people because when we're freaking out
and saying, oh my god, he's doing X, Y and
Z thing, what a lot of normal people see is,
what do you mean he's going and working at a
McDonald's as part of like a political stunt, or what
do you mean he's going and I don't know, just
going and distract, like making all these weird jokes and stuff,
or you know, going on and on about it. And

(52:27):
it's very disarming to people, frankly, in a very dangerous way,
because he is a dangerous man, very as we're seeing
around the country. But I think with John Stewart, what
I like about him is the same thing that I
like about AOC. He's funny, he says what he believes in,
and he gets shited done. And I know that because

(52:51):
I saw when they were working on the Packed Actor.
Sorry might get emotion, I'm talking about this. That summer
they were Democrats were working on passing the largest expansion

(53:11):
of veterans healthcare in American history. And that's in part
because of President Biden's lift experience obviously with his son,
which was horrifying. Died of cancer, very likely caused by
a burnpit. I got a text from a friend that said, hey,
there's some veterans that are out here that are protesting
because what happened is Democrats actually out maneuvered, to Chuck
Schumer's credit, he out maneuvered Mitch McConnell with the Inflation

(53:34):
Reduction Act and Mitch McConnell was pissed about that. So
what happened is they said, you know what, we're going
to screw over the veterans. So right before they went
on recess, they killed the Packed Act from passing. The
Republicans did the largest expansion of veterans healthcare in American history.

Speaker 3 (53:48):
And I took this personally.

Speaker 4 (53:49):
There are let me count off the top of my head, went,
there's at least four Navy pilots in my family that
we've had between my aunt, my uncle, my grandpa, and
my father, and my dad has Parkinson's very likely caused
by being exposed to Judge fuel and other toxic substances
in the military. And my friend texted me and said, Hey,

(54:10):
there's a group of veterans that are sleeping on the
steps of the US Senate right now and they're going
to stay out there, pulling all nighters what they called
a firewatch until this bill passes. And I went out
there and I was talking to them, and I was
so inspired by them because I saw my dad in them,

(54:32):
I saw my family members in them that I said,
what I'm gonna do is I'm just going to stay
out here and I'm going to interview you guys like
all night. So I took out my phone and I
literally just posted directly to Twitter. I said, tell me
your story and why you're here. And I heard so
many heartbreaking stories of veterans who served overseas that then
got a rare form of cancer and were denied their

(54:53):
benefits that our country failed to serve. That is why
they were out there. And one of those people that
I met, you know, had worked for the federal government,
and now he is facing a very real chance that
his retirement is going to be cut by several hundred
thousand dollars because of this bill that Republicans are pushing
through right now. And I will never forget when John

(55:18):
Stewart showed up to support those veterans and help get
that bill passed, and it did get passed. Is one
of the largest expansions ever the veterans' healthcare. Because in
the past, you used to say, you used to have
to say, oh, you know, this very rare form of
cancer that I got, you had to prove that it
was because you were exposed to all of these toxic
chemicals like agent orange or whatever else it might have

(55:40):
been in the military in order to get health care
for that. Why the hell is it on our veterans
that have served our country and risk their lives for
their country and sacrifice so much to prove to the
government that they served that their health care, that their
cancer is caused by that. I think it should be

(56:01):
on the government to prove why it isn't caused by that,
Because if we're willing to spend trillions of dollars on
stupid bullshit wars, overseas. We should be willing to spend
at least a couple of billion taking care of our
damn veterans that put their ass on the line. For
the politicians in DC that are way too comfortable right now,
and the fact that Republicans killed that at the last
second and we had to shame them in order to

(56:24):
pass that is disgusting. But that's part of the reason
why I'm a Democrat, because we do stuff like that.
We got that bill passed and we massively expanded healthcare
for millions of veterans around the country. But what scares
me is Republicans are already trying to chip away at
it and erode against it. So Yes, John Stewart is
an incredible and prolific figure that I think I wouldn't

(56:47):
even say is the future of our party. I would
say he is a major part of our party right now.

Speaker 1 (56:51):
Yeah, it's my hope.

Speaker 2 (56:52):
And I know you can't say this. I want him
to be President of the United States of America. I
really do. I think that he is such a fantastic,
thick messenger, and he actually knows politics, and he cares
about people and for the way the country is now
and where the country is going. As far as messaging,
you need somebody like him front and center that it's

(57:15):
my thought, David Hogg, thank you brother. I like the
work that you're doing. Man, keep fighting a good fight.

Speaker 3 (57:20):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (57:21):
That's right. If they can support you in anyway, what
should they do?

Speaker 4 (57:24):
People can just check out our website at leaders we
Deserve dot com and you can also see on there
too as we create more endorsements. Who's out there as well?

Speaker 1 (57:32):
Absolutely it is. David Hog is the Breakfast Club, Wake
that answer up in the morning. Breakfast Club