| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
|
C-SPAN, Democracy Unfiltered. | |
| We're funded by these television companies and more, including Comcast. | ||
| The flag replacement program got started by a good friend of mine, a Navy vet, who saw the flag at the office that needed to be replaced and said, wouldn't this be great if this was going to be something that we did for anyone? | ||
| Comcast has always been a community-driven company. | ||
| This is one of those great examples of the way we're getting out there. | ||
| Comcast supports C-SPAN as a public service, along with these other television providers, giving you a front row seat to democracy. | ||
| To Ceasefire, where we seek to bridge the divide in American politics. | ||
| I'm Dasha Burns, Politico White House Bureau Chief, and today, in the spirit of the holidays, we're taking a look back at some of our favorite bipartisan moments so far this season. | ||
| We start with a look back at the first ever episode of Ceasefire. | ||
| I was joined by former Republican Vice President Mike Pence and former Obama Chief of Staff Rob Emmanuel. | ||
| Despite their political differences, the two have a friendship that started when their offices were located close to each other during their time in Congress in the 2000s. | ||
| Take a listen. | ||
| You know, Indiana's famous for a lot of things. | ||
| Popcorn's one of them. | ||
| We love your popcorn. | ||
| So as a congressman, I had a popcorn machine in the lobby of my office, and my staff frequently saw Congressman Rom Emmanuel come down for a bag, and he was always welcome. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I want to be clear, it was a bag of popcorn. | |
| Let's be very clear. | ||
| This is not Chicago. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| So you would go, you'd get some popcorn, you want to talk politics? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Maybe they gave me a lottery, you know, when you get in office. | |
| Maybe they wanted adult supervision for me. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But yeah, I would get popcorn. | |
| But Mike and I often would, bell would ring and we would walk from Longworth, fourth floor, over a vote together. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And that's how we got to know each other very well. | |
| It was a divided Congress back then, familiar to people right now, but do you think at that time it was a little bit less taboo to work across the aisle or was it pretty hard back then too? | ||
| Well, I think it's, I mean, one of the best kept secrets in America is that most of the people that get elected to Congress actually come there to actually do the job and to make progress. | ||
| They're here to advance an agenda, and Rom and I have different agendas and different policy prescriptions. | ||
| But I think we are living in a time when a lot of the rewards go to what I think is more performance art, incentive structure, and policy. | ||
| And the thing that I appreciated about Rahm is while we differed, particularly after he led the charge for the Democrats to defeat the Republican majority in 2006, I always felt that. | ||
| Still too soon. | ||
| We won it back a couple years later. | ||
| Getting some PTSD here. | ||
| I would tell you, I will say this about Rom, that, and I still feel that way, that he was one of those people that when he told you that his conference was going to do something, they did it. | ||
| And that's the way, you know, democracy depends on heavy doses of civility. | ||
| And maintaining the ability to find things that we can agree on begins with civility. | ||
| And it was a different time back then. | ||
| Civility look like for you. | ||
| I mean, look, I don't want to speak for the Republicans or for Mike on this situation as the vice president is everybody knew when I took over the campaign committee for the House, that was my job, that was my responsibility. | ||
| It didn't mean that when we were in the halls and in committees, we weren't going to work together. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I didn't mean that. | |
| And we do have different agendas. | ||
| But Mike and I just saw each other right before we got here at the table. | ||
| First thing we always do: he gives me a rundown on his kids. | ||
| I give him a rundown on my kids. | ||
| He has a son and a son-in-law in the armed forces. | ||
| I have two, out of my three children, are in the armed forces as well, same branch. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And we check in on each other all like that. | |
| Parents before partisans? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Without a doubt. | |
| And I always tease him about this because he knows this. | ||
| What am I about to do? | ||
| He owes my son $10 from a bet on the 2008. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He said he is never paid. | |
| But here's the thing. | ||
| Well, this is exactly what this table was for. | ||
| I want a 6% interest, not a 2% interest. | ||
| But the serious thing is, we disagreed on things, but we didn't see this as brave heart hunger games where we were going to try to kill each other. | ||
| Now, I do think, and I kind of resistant to this, because I don't think blaming social media for everything means you've absolved yourself of your own judgment and responsibility. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But social media has forced people into ideological ghettos. | |
| And it exacerbates, and the fundraising apparatus also exacerbates that. | ||
| So, you know, one of my first bills was the Great Lake Restoration Act to restore funding for the Great Lakes. | ||
| All the members of Congress from the Midwest who boarded the Great Lakes signed on to it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And I'm chair of the Griple C. Win back down. | |
| It's President Bush that signs it into law. | ||
| I do want to clear up the whole bet thing. | ||
| It was actually 2008. | ||
| President Obama was running. | ||
| And Rah, who, you know, his kids apparently don't fall too far from the tree, as we say in Indiana, I ran into him a month before the election. | ||
| And Rah is sounding confident about President Obama's chances, then candidate Obama. | ||
| And his son looked at me defiantly and said, we're going to win Indiana. | ||
| And you're not going to win Indiana. | ||
| Nobody won Indiana since JFK. | ||
| And on the Democrat side, I lost the bet. | ||
| Zachariah's job at the age of 10 was to co-polling in Chicago across the country. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He got him started young. | |
| This was his choice. | ||
| And he would take the train, et cetera, et cetera. | ||
| And he sees then Congressman Pence, and he says, no, Senator Obama's going to win on it. | ||
| And he says, okay, I'll bet you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And I said, he goes, $10. | |
| And I just, every time I see him, I tease him. | ||
| I said, you owe $10 plus cumulative interest. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It compounded it. | |
| That will be hanging over your head forever. | ||
| I intend to keep it hanging over your head. | ||
| I want to stop. | ||
| I'm going to go from national security. | ||
| I also say foreign policy. | ||
| Look, Rah and I are going to differ on core issues. | ||
| We're going to talk about some of those. | ||
| I'm pro-life. | ||
| I don't apologize for it. | ||
| I know he has a different view of that. | ||
| I think in terms of size and scope of government, Rah and his party have supported solutions that I consider big government solutions, expansions of the welfare state. | ||
| But where I want to take a second and commend him is I'm grateful for the role you played as ambassador to Japan. | ||
| I think one of the accomplishments of our administration was that we changed the national consensus on China. | ||
| And up to that time, there were differing opinions about the approach to China. | ||
| Our administration took a strong stand saying we're going to end this era of trade abuses, intellectual property theft, military provocations, human rights abuses. | ||
| And I will say that our ambassador to Japan was one of the most clarion voices in the Asian Pacific calling out China unapologetically. | ||
| And I've said that publicly. | ||
| I say it again today. | ||
| I'm grateful for it. | ||
| Such a great pairing to kick off ceasefire history. | ||
| And by the way, after their interview, Pence and Emmanuel met each other in the green room, and the former vice president tried to make good on his bet with Emmanuel's son by giving him a $10 bill. | ||
| Emmanuel would have none of it, telling Pence he'd have to give it to his son directly. | ||
| I want to now look back at another friendship that started on the Hill. | ||
| Florida Congressman Jared Moskowitz and Tennessee Republican Tim Burchett quickly became friends. | ||
| Here's their origin story and how they even celebrate their holidays together. | ||
| We're going public with it? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I guess. | |
| Okay. | ||
| Tim and I met, you know, just on the floor through mutual friends. | ||
| And Tim's someone who, even when he disagrees, vehemently disagrees, Tim makes friends across the aisle with everyone. | ||
| Tim's got a lot of friends. | ||
| In fact, I would argue Tim probably has more friends across the aisle than anyone, anyone else. | ||
| Well, yeah, he's been here longer. | ||
| So because of longevity. | ||
| No, but I think that's the point, which is you can disagree without being disagreeable. | ||
| You could still ask, how's your family? | ||
| You could still ask, how are the kids? | ||
| You could still go up to a member who you know who's battling something and say, hey, how's it going? | ||
| And that's what Tim does. | ||
| And that's how we met. | ||
| Tim? | ||
| Just like Jared. | ||
| He's my guy. | ||
| We don't agree probably on anything much politically, but we were friends. | ||
| And I remember when that Jewish couple was assassinated, a young couple in Washington, that was a wake-up call. | ||
| And I went to our leadership and I said, we need to make sure that especially our Jewish members are protected. | ||
| And a lot of the Jewish members reached out to me across the aisle. | ||
| But Jared and I had been buddies. | ||
| And after Charlie Kirk got shot, first person to say anything to me about it, Jared Moskwitz. | ||
| He asked me how I was doing and if I was being safe. | ||
| And, you know, he's my buddy. | ||
| We've been friends since he got to Congress. | ||
| And he actually took me to lunch one day. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| Breaking bread. | ||
| You know, I'm from Tennessee. | ||
| Back when I was in the legislature, we always reached across the aisle. | ||
| I mean, it raised the speed limit with Steve Cohen. | ||
| And I dare say we probably don't agree on anything. | ||
| But, you know, he called my mama when my dad died. | ||
| So we've been friends ever since we were in the legislature. | ||
| And Jared's no different. | ||
| We talk, we call each other. | ||
| And, you know, he was my Santa Claus. | ||
| Yeah, I want to put a little something up on the screen and have you guys explain this to me. | ||
| By the way, that's, I'm not the baby. | ||
| Oh, that's Luna's. | ||
| Is that baby Henry? | ||
| It's Luna's baby. | ||
| That is quite a beard you got there. | ||
| Yeah, and see, you got the, what are the candles called behind it? | ||
| That's a menorah tape. | ||
| Menorah, yeah. | ||
| Yeah, I'm sorry. | ||
| There's only one way to spell it. | ||
| Yeah, but he, you know, and Jared he's Jewish, and I've tried to be a Christian. | ||
| And I remember I was on some TV, national TV show. | ||
| It was CNN, actually. | ||
| Yeah, and they said, don't you realize that Jared is Jewish? | ||
| And I said, hey, my dadgum Savior is Jewish. | ||
| Why can't my Santa Claus be Jewish, you know? | ||
| Yeah, I found out I was Santa Claus at Tim's 15-minute Christmas party through CNN. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So that brings me to my next question. | |
| You walk down the hall with two dadgum poodles like they were reindeer. | ||
| And they're not my poodles. | ||
| And they're not, who's, what's his name? | ||
| Marcelo, Marcello, my brother. | ||
| Who's beard? | ||
| There are a lot of questions. | ||
| Yes, ma'am. | ||
| But he went all out. | ||
| Poodles and beard in the same conversation. | ||
| He went all out, and it was, I have a 15-minute Christmas party. | ||
| Yeah, those are famous. | ||
| Tell us about those. | ||
| Well, you go to a Christmas party, and what happens? | ||
| You sit there for three hours, or maybe a Hanukkah party, I don't know. | ||
| And you're sitting there in the corner. | ||
| We have those, by the way. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's what you do. | |
| And so somebody corners you, somebody with wine breath, and you got to sit there and listen to them for 30 or 45 minutes. | ||
| And I'm thinking, you know, after 15 minutes, you've already got all the conversation you need. | ||
| So I said, we're going to do a dadgum 15-minute Christmas party. | ||
| And then, but last year, we would have 14 because we thought it dragged on too long. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Cut it myself. | |
| 15 minutes. | ||
| It's like the old days. | ||
| And I'm wearing, did you wear the costume for 15 minutes? | ||
| 100%. | ||
| And I took it super seriously. | ||
| Oh, because he posed with pictures. | ||
| He sat down. | ||
| People sat on his lap. | ||
| I asked him what they wanted for Christmas. | ||
| Like, if you're going to come and make me Santa, like, I'm going to go all out. | ||
| That's a huge responsibility. | ||
| 100%. | ||
| So Spielberg called me afterwards and said, can we have the film rights? | ||
| And I said, that was a dietrich Spielberg. | ||
| Different. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, anyway. | ||
| No, no, like Tim had kids there. | ||
| So these kids are coming up and they're saying, you know, I want a train for Christmas. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And so then, like, I'm like, 100%, if you're a good boy, you know, you'll be able to. | |
| Congressman Santa. | ||
| And then I'm going, like, you know, secretly finding the parents be like, you know, you know, he wants a train. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, so I think, look, I think a lot of Americans are watching this right now and are thinking, this is not the typical representation of Congress. | ||
| Most people look at Washington and see people fighting. | ||
| Do you think this kind of relationship across the aisle is rare or is it more common than people realize? | ||
| Well, I think there are a lot of relationships, not as many as there used to be. | ||
| But I still think there are a lot of relationships. | ||
| The problem is there's no incentive. | ||
| There are not shows like this, right, that are incentivizing that relationship. | ||
| The incentive on social media, the incentive on TV is only to fight. | ||
| It isn't to find common ground. | ||
| And by the way, you can fight and still be friendly, but that incentive system, you know, then you're not a fighter, then you're giving up your principles. | ||
| Remember, if you call the other side the enemy or a traitor, you know, how could you have friends? | ||
| And so, you know, look, we've done this to ourselves because we have played along with the negative incentive system. | ||
| I'll just, he's an attorney, thinks he's getting paid by the word here, but I'll just make it a lot easier. | ||
| Everybody's just selling memberships, ma'am. | ||
| What do you mean by that? | ||
| If blacks and whites are fighting, Jews and Christians are fighting, and Muslims are all fighting, then it just keeps the whole leadership in power. | ||
| And they're all sitting there laughing at us, and they're still getting their checks. | ||
| And we're beating the crap out of each other. | ||
| For the record, that was as many words as I said. | ||
| I just, for you know. | ||
| Burchett and Moskowitz gave us our first and hopefully not last ceasefire fist bump at the end of the show. | ||
| We taped that episode back in November and since then, Congressman Burchett has held another of his famous Christmas parties. | ||
| Here's a look at the festivities during the 15-minute celebration of what says bipartisanship more than this. | ||
| And now I want to look back at our episode featuring two state leaders, Oklahoma Republican Governor Kevin Stitt and Maryland Democratic Governor Wes Moore, discussing some of the work that they are doing across the aisle. | ||
| First off, I think it's really good for Americans to see that we don't always disagree, that we actually like each other, we can agree on some things. | ||
| And as governors, we have a unique perspective that we literally are trying to make our states the best places to live, to work, to raise our families. | ||
| We're focused on the economy, health care, infrastructure, education. | ||
| And I know Governor Moore is focused on making Maryland the very best state. | ||
| And I'm focused on making Oklahoma the very best state. | ||
| And that's the cool thing about governors. | ||
| And sometimes Washington, D.C. tries to divide us, and this national politics gets so messy. | ||
| Yeah, I see why you both didn't want to come sit at the table here in Washington, D.C. and stayed safely in your states because, yeah, right now, I mean, the divisions in Washington are pretty striking. | ||
| Governor Moore, what has it been like working with Governor Stitt? | ||
| And I mean, yeah, it looks like Republicans and Democrats might be able to get some stuff done together. | ||
| Maybe just not in D.C. | ||
| Well, I've loved working with Governor Stitt because in Governor Stid, I know it's someone who believes in the people of Oklahoma and someone who believes that best ideas and best practices can be found anywhere, both in Democratic and Republican states. | ||
| And the only thing we're trying to do is just to make sure that each and every one of our states have the best chance of long-term prosperity and the best chance to make it the best livable place for the people in our state. | ||
| And I think about it from my background, I know also from Governor Sitt's background, is that we don't come from this world of just broken politics. | ||
| We are the chief executives of our state. | ||
| And for me, my background is I was an Army officer. | ||
| I led soldiers in combat. | ||
| And I never once asked my soldiers, what's your political party? | ||
| It never came up. | ||
| And it's the same thing as governor. | ||
| It's not something of an interest to me. | ||
| I will fight for anybody, whether they live in the Eastern Shore or in Western Maryland, as long as they're a Marylander, that's all I need to know. | ||
| And so that's the great thing about the work of governors is we are going to fight for all of our people, no matter their political affiliation, because the work has got to get done and we've got to be the ones to make sure that things happen. | ||
| We also went back in time with the governors, showing a throwback moment from Governor Moore's younger days. | ||
| I want to show you a clip from then 27-year-old White House fellow Wes Moore appearing on C-SPAN's Q ⁇ A with Brian Lamb in 2006. | ||
| Here's a treat. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, as you know, it's been written and your friends have kid you about being Mr. President. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| No, and I think it's probably more so because I've been a class president throughout that time. | ||
| How many years class president? | ||
| Six years. | ||
| Regimental commander for how many years? | ||
| One year. | ||
|
unidentified
|
One year job. | |
| And again, you know, whether it be through politics, you know, we'll see, but I know public service is something that I'm devoted to. | ||
| But you know, the famous picture of Bill Clinton in the Rose Garden with John Kennedy when he was Boy's Nation. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Absolutely. | |
| Do you think of that when you're going around? | ||
| When you're in these positions? | ||
|
unidentified
|
You look around that White House and say, this is pretty nice. | |
| I look around the White House and say, you know, some really amazing men who have walked through those walls and amazing men and women have walked through those gates. | ||
| And I'm just honored to be there. | ||
| Look at that fresh face, Governor Moore. | ||
| He's so young. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, my goodness. | |
| Wow. | ||
| Governor Sitt. | ||
| That's pretty amazing. | ||
| Can you believe it? | ||
| 27 years old. | ||
| Hey, you've got to text me that picture, Governor Moore. | ||
| I can't see it on my end, so I can't wait to go back and watch this. | ||
| We'll send you a link to them. | ||
| We love to dig into the C-SPAN archives and have some fun with our guests here on Ceasefire. | ||
| So I now want to highlight what might seem like an unlikely pairing for this show. | ||
| Former Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel and former Democratic National Committee Chair Donna Brazil. | ||
| I asked the ladies about their former roles as party chairs and challenges they faced. | ||
| It's a very thankless job. | ||
| You know, I was vice chair for a number of years and I found myself as the vice chair being prepared to step up if the chair decided to do something else. | ||
| And in the case of Tim Kaine, who was the chair at the time, he decided to run for the United States Senate. | ||
| He was governor of Virginia, and I had to step up for a few months. | ||
| And then here come that big, big convention. | ||
| I'm in Philadelphia. | ||
| I'm ready to start partying. | ||
| And I get a call that Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the congresswoman from the great state of Florida, wanted to see me. | ||
| She said, I'm stepping down. | ||
| I say, why? | ||
| And I'm like, oh my God, I got to do this. | ||
| How many glasses of wine in were you with about that? | ||
| Well, it was early in the morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So I was like, okay, I had a lot of wine in there. | |
| I had a lot of caffeine in me, but it really was a turbulent moment in the Democratic Party. | ||
| You might recall that the Democratic Party was, we had a very robust political season. | ||
| And Hillary and Bernard went to the bitter end. | ||
| And the Sanders people were demanding changes to the entire process. | ||
| And Debbie decided enough was enough. | ||
| And so I stepped up again. | ||
| And this time I had to serve for quite a few months. | ||
| So unlike the first round of being the chair of the party, this time I had to not only step up, but when Hillary lost to Donald Trump, I had to also begin the transition process. | ||
| It was a tough, it was a tough period. | ||
| Yeah, Ronna, what did your version of that look like? | ||
| It was tough. | ||
| I think for me, coming from outside of D.C., being from Michigan and coming in, I was Michigan Party chair, and then I took over after Trump won in 2016. | ||
| And I was here for seven years, which is the longest for anybody in our party. | ||
| And there was a lot that happened, you know, two impeachments, a Russia investigation, a pandemic. | ||
| There were a lot of things that happened during that time. | ||
| But for me, just getting my sea legs a little bit too, the raising the money, getting to know people, it takes a lot of time and effort. | ||
| And it is a thankless job in a lot of ways. | ||
| You both have had a moment to take a step back. | ||
| The dust has settled. | ||
| We've had some distance from your tenure and from those turbulent election cycles. | ||
| How have you seen your parties evolve over the last several years? | ||
| There's no question the Democratic Party following the disaster of the 2024 cycle. | ||
| The Democratic Party is getting their C-legs back, recruiting new candidates. | ||
| We're about to undergo a generational shift within the party. | ||
| And we'll dig into all of that. | ||
| Not just at the national level, but I also think at the state and local levels, which, as you all know, you need that new energy, that new vision, that new spirit of democracy that flourishes when new people are allowed in the door. | ||
| So I think the Democratic Party has had to learn some valuable lessons over the last few months. | ||
| And one, we have to be a 50-state party 24-7. | ||
| We can't wait till the last minute to engage voters. | ||
| We learned something from the Republicans, especially in the Trump era. | ||
| You have to go out and find the influencers, find people at the grassroot level. | ||
| So I think the party is going to make a good comeback in the 2026 and, of course, the 2028 elections, which is wide open. | ||
| And I look forward to seeing this new generation flourish. | ||
| Lessons learned for Democrats from Donald Trump. | ||
| That's fascinating. | ||
| Ronna, what have you seen in the Republican Party? | ||
| Obviously, there's been so much talk about Trump's influence, but what have you seen in terms of the change since you left your post? | ||
| And from my experience as the White House Bureau Chief, he has changed a lot from his first term. | ||
| The party has changed from his first term. | ||
| It has. | ||
| I mean, I left in 2024. | ||
| So I think a lot of the things that we learned were from Obama, right? | ||
| Getting involved, getting in the ground game, making sure that we're knocking doors and engaging voters, and then expanding that and going to the next stage. | ||
| Yeah, hers was like a guidebook. | ||
| You know, how do we get into communities? | ||
| How do we engage voters? | ||
| We were reaching out to Latino voters and black voters and Asian voters. | ||
| This was a big initiative that I was certainly proud of that the RNC was doing. | ||
| And then Trump took it even further by getting with the influencers, understanding the young male vote. | ||
| I think he understood that so well in 2024, the changing ways that people are consuming news, how they're getting engaged in politics through TikTok and other mediums. | ||
| But I think our parties have changed too. | ||
| Trump is a working class president. | ||
| And the suburbs have become more Democrats. | ||
| So we've seen almost like a flip in our parties in who's turning out and we'll see what happens going forward. | ||
| You know, I learned something from the RNC. | ||
| I think we should learn from each other. | ||
| And that is after the 2014 election, the RNC did an autopsy, 2012. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| An autopsy. | ||
| And in that autopsy, they talked about how they had to build bridges. | ||
| They couldn't just rely on the coalition that had won previous elections. | ||
| And the Republican Party began to make investments. | ||
| I went back to Washington. | ||
| I like to travel. | ||
| And I was in your beautiful great state of Michigan. | ||
| And I'm like, the Republicans are here in Wayne County? | ||
| I mean, they had a headquarters. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We did. | |
| That was when I was chair in office. | ||
| Of course. | ||
| In Wayne County. | ||
| In Motown. | ||
| And I'm like, and I kept writing emails to Tom Perez and others. | ||
| I said, the Republicans are making inroads. | ||
| It was incremental, but it was very important that they had strategic investments, people who could actually go door to door and talk to people about the alternatives. | ||
| And I think that's one of the reasons why Donald Trump was able to expand his electorate and expand his, you know, so-called strategic corridors. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, it's so interesting because I think from the outside, people see that expansion of the coalition and kind of feel like that happened overnight or that happened just because the president is onto social and has such high name recognition. | ||
| But actually those seeds had been planted for a long time, right? | ||
| I think it's important to recognize that it was intentional. | ||
| I mean, we had community centers in Detroit. | ||
| We had them in Texas and Hispanic communities where we were speaking Spanish, the people we had work in it. | ||
| But we also did things off-year, like formula drives or back-to-school drives. | ||
| So we were part of the community. | ||
| We had dance classes. | ||
| We didn't go in and out. | ||
| No, we were there. | ||
| And we had dance classes in some of them. | ||
| We had cooking nights. | ||
| But it also makes us better as a party. | ||
| And I think this is for both of us because when you're in these communities, and I'll just give an example of Detroit, our governor at the time was talking about skilled trades, skilled trades. | ||
| And I had one young woman raise her hand and say, you know, your governor is Republican. | ||
| Keep saying that. | ||
| I can't get to work. | ||
| I can't get a license in Michigan right now. | ||
| It's too expensive for me to get my permit. | ||
| And I was able to go back to my governor in a community where we had no Republican representation and say, this is what I'm hearing in Detroit. | ||
| How do we represent people better? | ||
| And part of it's by listening to them. | ||
| So yes, of course we want to get votes, but we have to listen so we can govern better. | ||
| Donna, you talked about autopsies. | ||
| I have gotten a sense from the Democratic Party post-2024 that there's been a challenge to That autopsy to do it in a productive and united way. | ||
| There's been a lot of finger pointing, but not a lot of sort of coming together and acknowledging with unity what went wrong, right? | ||
| Do you think there's been enough of an autopsy of 24 to learn those lessons that you can take forward? | ||
| I have read five autopsies. | ||
| Five. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| But they were not drafted or written by the Democratic National Committee. | ||
| I think the committee will put out a report at the end of the year that will go into more detail about how they not only allocated resources, but pretty much, you know, when you have your party have the White House, which you've experienced before, the White House drives a lot of your politics, a lot of your resources, and a lot of the deployment of troops, I call them troops, but deployment of volunteers and staff and so forth. | ||
| So I think the DNC needs to conduct and finish up its research. | ||
| But by and large, what you've learned from all of the other players in the field is that, one, we waited too long to make the switch. | ||
| We call it on the Democrats, we call it the switch when we switch from Joe Biden to Kamala Harris. | ||
| Second, we were not playing across the board. | ||
| We limited our engagement to six, seven states, which is always a problem when you live in a country where you don't know where, which way the wind will blow. | ||
| And I also believe that we've got to look at technology and the algorithms and social media and the using influences. | ||
| I also think they will conclude, and again, I'm not involved in this report. | ||
| We had a lot of grass tops, but we missed the grass bottoms. | ||
| I mean, the people who actually drive politics, drive the conversation. | ||
| And, you know, I agree with the chairwoman. | ||
| Nowadays, people don't want to just gather and talk politics. | ||
| They want to talk about what's going on in the community. | ||
| They want to talk swimming classes, spinning classes. | ||
| You know, people gather in different ways and book clubs, for example. | ||
| And we're learning that you can reach more people by not putting your partisanship out there, but figuring out what brings people together in that particular community. | ||
| Before I let Donna Brazil and Rona McDaniel go, we took them back in time to look at some of the moments in their political history before they rose to chairs of their respective parties. | ||
| This is never before seen video. | ||
| Take a look. | ||
| I'm going to take you ladies down memory lane right now. | ||
| We went into the C-SPAN archives, found a 1993 interview with DC delegate Eleanor Holmes, Chief of Staff, Donna Brazil, discussing her duties. | ||
| Watch. | ||
| At the beginning of the year, what I try to do is ask my member, you know, to give me some idea of what she would like to accomplish this year. | ||
| And, you know, the first year it was easy because she was, you know, the first year she came into office, I mean, she had, you know, defined goals. | ||
| They were basically the campaign goals. | ||
| The second year, it was a little bit more difficult getting that information out of her. | ||
| She had, you know, spent her first term in Congress. | ||
| She was pretty successful. | ||
| She won re-election by 85% of the vote. | ||
| So it was like, well, we'll just make this up as we go. | ||
| Well, I knew that would be very hard if we allowed the office just to function without any defined goals. | ||
| So what we did as a staff was we sat down and we said, okay, here's some of the things that we didn't accomplish the last term that we would like to accomplish. | ||
| We put it down on paper, we gave it to the member, and that made the member focus. | ||
| It's the glasses and the shoulder pads for me. | ||
| How does it feel? | ||
| And the earrings, how does it feel looking back at that? | ||
| Well, and the hair. | ||
| I used to have the thickest hair. | ||
| And when it started turning gray, I'm like, let it go. | ||
| Just let it go. | ||
| No, but as a congressional staff, I would focus Eleanor. | ||
| I say, Elena, we need to have defined goals. | ||
| We need to tell the constituents what are we going to focus on? | ||
| Are we going to improve constituent services? | ||
| Actually, that year, we had to work with the Bush administration to ensure that the district had enough resources because we were running short of cash. | ||
| And so we needed a larger federal payment. | ||
| And then I started focusing the office on constituent services. | ||
| Ultimately, that has kept Eleanor Holmes Norton in office. | ||
| And hopefully, Cross and Fingers in 2026 she will decide she's ready to retire. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Look good, Donna. | ||
| I'm just going to say. | ||
| Well, don't worry. | ||
| Don't worry. | ||
| We got you too, Ronna. | ||
| We dug in and we found a clip of you campaigning with Laura Bush for your Uncle Mitt Romney in 2012. | ||
| Take a look. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, no. | |
| So I want to say a couple things about this election. | ||
| I know they have a saying in Texas that says, don't mess with Texas, right? | ||
| We know. | ||
| And I want to introduce Mrs. Bush to a little saying we have here in Michigan, which is don't mess with the myth, right? | ||
| Don't mess with the myth. | ||
| This is Mitt Romney's home state. | ||
| This is where he was born and raised. | ||
| This is where he fell in love with Ann. | ||
| This is where his parents are buried. | ||
| This is the state that's going to put him over the edge and put him into the White House. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| My mic was going out. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Look at that. | |
| Look at that. | ||
| Look at that spunk even then. | ||
| I was a stay-at-home mom in Michigan, and I just got on the campaign trail to help my Uncle Mitt. | ||
| And it was like so nerve-wracking. | ||
| I didn't know I was going to be on C-SPAN, but I had my kids there, and then that's what propelled me to go run for Michigan chair because I'm like, Michigan is a winnable state for Republicans. | ||
| We didn't do it for my Uncle Mitt, but we did do it for Donald Trump when I was chair. | ||
| This is why I love the C-SPAN archives. | ||
| Moments like this. | ||
| Thank you, ladies, so much. | ||
| Appreciate it. | ||
| Thanks for that. | ||
| A great conversation with Donna Brazil and Ronna McDaniel, who got pretty chummy despite their political differences. | ||
| Let's now turn to two current lawmakers who developed a friendship during their time working together in the House: Utah Republican Senator John Curtis and California Democratic Congressman Scott Peters. | ||
| I asked the lawmakers if their bipartisan relationship continues despite Curtis moving to the Senate. | ||
| Well, a big shout out to my colleague, Representative Peters, not only a good person, but a good friend. | ||
| I don't know, maybe Scott remembers where it started to me. | ||
| I can't even really pinpoint a specific moment. | ||
| But Scott's always been really good on climate. | ||
| I've aspired to be good from a Republican perspective. | ||
| Maybe it was a trip we traveled on, Scott. | ||
| Maybe you can remember exactly where it was. | ||
| But just a great amount of respect. | ||
| South America, we did, yeah. | ||
| South America, yeah. | ||
| Yeah, Congressman, is that trip the bipartisan friendship that you all developed? | ||
| Is that still lingering, even though you're in different places on the Hill now? | ||
| Well, you know, senators are so hard to get to. | ||
| They're very special. | ||
| But I'm confident that when I see John, that we will continue to be friends. | ||
| No, in all honesty, I think John and I kid it off right away because although we're from different parties, we like to solve problems. | ||
| I think one of the things about John is he was a mayor. | ||
| I was a city council president in San Diego. | ||
| He was mayor provo. | ||
| We're used to having to work things out. | ||
| And you just can't make a speech and go home and say you did your job. | ||
| You actually have to work to solutions. | ||
| And I think we're both oriented that way. | ||
| So it's been a relationship around that. | ||
| I think, you know, he's a pretty likable guy as well. | ||
| You both are seen as moderates in your parties. | ||
| How hard is being a moderate within your own caucus right now? | ||
| Let me first of all just beat up on the word moderate for a moment because a moderate in San Diego is different than a moderate in Utah. | ||
| And I like to tease people when they say you're a moderate. | ||
| And I say, could you just substitute that word with normal, right? | ||
| And I think we try to be normal, right? | ||
| We try to be like the people that we represent. | ||
| And I think, you know, the Scotts obviously does a fantastic job of that. | ||
| And we represent, you know, different people from different perspectives. | ||
| But part of that is simply really just being a normal Utah. | ||
| Right, but that conversation does tend to change a little bit once you get into the national sphere, right? | ||
| So, Congressman Peters, what is the moderate and Democrat challenge when it comes to here in Washington when you're in D.C.? | ||
| Well, for me, I really come to be a problem solver. | ||
| And like I said before, you really can't do that with one party. | ||
| You know, you need to get a majority in the House. | ||
| You need 60 votes in the Senate for just about anything. | ||
| So you're going to need both parties under any circumstance. | ||
| So if you're not willing to listen to folks on the other side and not willing to really figure, like take the problem false first, say what's the solution and then build the politics around that. | ||
| I don't think you're really going to be successful in getting things done, which is why I come to Congress in the first place. | ||
| It's not that good a job if you live in San Diego to go to Washington, D.C. I'm from San Diego myself. | ||
| Sometimes I question my life choices. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, well, come visit, but it's very, very important. | ||
| I'm from North County, Oceanside. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, but I'm saying, like, for me, you know, that's going to mean that the people who are really on the sidelines, who are advocates, are going to disagree with you, and you have to get used to that. | ||
| I tell my staff, if no one's grumbling, we're not getting anything done because change upsets people. | ||
| But it's really what people want us to do. | ||
| They didn't really send us here to make speeches and go home and say our job is done. | ||
| How much grumbling do you get from members of your own party when you try to be bipartisan? | ||
| I've had two big battles. | ||
| I can just mention for you. | ||
| One, I was an advocate of President Obama's free trade arrangement, the Trans-Pacific Partnership. | ||
| There was not a majority of Democrats who were for that, but I just saw that as a way to help American businesses get their products out over the world where most of the consumers are. | ||
| I tried my best to explain it to people here, but the labor community was very upset with me. | ||
| We had protests at my office, and I still think it's right. | ||
| I think the way tariffs are playing out now shows us that that was really a pretty good way to go. | ||
| And then also when the Democrats had the House, the Senate, and the presidency, the trifecta, like the Republicans have now, we did a provision on drug pricing. | ||
| I did not like the way our party had fashioned it at the beginning. | ||
| I thought it was going to destroy private investment in drug discovery. | ||
| So I wanted to make an amendment. | ||
| I got hammered for that too. | ||
| Protests at the office, people calling me all sorts of names. | ||
| But we made the bill better, and all the Democrats ran for re-election on the product that we produced. | ||
| And I think they made a contribution. | ||
| But it's not like it's easy. | ||
| Despite the grumbling. | ||
| Yeah, and also political courage. | ||
| Political courage is just people yelling at you. | ||
| We're not deployed overseas in battle. | ||
| We just have to be willing for people to yell at us. | ||
| And I think, as I say, you need to really find those points where you have to talk back to your own people. | ||
| And that's when leadership starts. | ||
| Well, Senator Curtis, I want to play a moment from you on the floor earlier this year. | ||
| This is a floor speech, your first floor speech in May. | ||
| And I've said many times, I want both the president and this institution, the Senate, to be wildly successful. | ||
| Sometimes that desire requires us to be wildly honest, something that I think we'll all agree we could use a little more of in Washington, D.C. | ||
| The way I see it, the odds of Congress delivering real results for the American people go up dramatically when we start telling each other the truth. | ||
| not just behind closed doors, but out in the open, where the public can see what I believe is the right to know. | ||
| Honest policy conversations on issues that are vital to the fundamental of our future matter more than ever. | ||
| So, how is Congress doing with honest policy conversations so far? | ||
| Well, first I'm going to give a shout out to my colleague from San Diego. | ||
| The couple of points he brought up didn't go unnoticed. | ||
| And I think that when people see people on the other side of the aisle take those positions, it builds credibility and makes somebody far more likely to reach out to them. | ||
| So Scott's done a really good job at that. | ||
| The reason, you know, your maiden speech in the Senate's a big deal. | ||
| It puts down a marker, right? | ||
| So why did I bring up that topic in my maiden speech? | ||
| Is I wanted that marker. | ||
| And I could point to a couple of areas where we're really not being honest with the American people. | ||
| And I think that's why you get a lot of frustration is they're smart enough to know, right, when we're not being honest with them. | ||
| And I'd love to be part of turning that around. | ||
| Up next, two former lawmakers who both left office in 2021 joined me one episode to lend an outside perspective on the future of their parties. | ||
| Let's take a look back at my conversation with former Alabama Democratic Senator Doug Jones and former Ohio Congressman Steve Stivers. | ||
| Doug, you have some familiarity with being a Democrat in a red state. | ||
| Do you think that the Democrats should be going into those kinds of districts, those kinds of places, and pushing to connect with voters in these areas? | ||
| Oh, absolutely. | ||
| There is no question about that. | ||
| I mean, I think that that is one of the problems that the party is suffering from right now. | ||
| The party abandoned the South. | ||
| The party abandoned states in the Midwest. | ||
| And I think we've got to go back into that, and we've got to get credible candidates that if you get a credible candidate, that you can make that candidate competitive. | ||
| And we've got to start going into those areas. | ||
| And just look what happened last Tuesday. | ||
| In Georgia alone, you had two down ballot kind of races for Public Service Commission that flipped in which Democrats beat incumbents and beat them badly. | ||
| It wasn't a razor-thin margin. | ||
| They beat them badly. | ||
| And those states flipped the first statewide offices that Democrats have won in over 20 years. | ||
| In Mississippi, you had the legislature. | ||
| Three legislative seats flipped to Democrats. | ||
| Then there is no longer a supermajority in the Mississippi legislature. | ||
| When you go in there and you can talk about issues, you can make some headway. | ||
| And quite frankly, that's the way it should have been all of the time. | ||
| We shouldn't have all the gerrymandering and all of this stuff going on. | ||
| Everybody should be competing for the votes of their voters and their constituents and not just taking them all for granted. | ||
| So yeah, let's come to the South. | ||
| Well, and Steve, I think, you know, President Trump actually kind of cracked the door open on this idea that you can reach voters in some unexpected places. | ||
| I mean, you see how well he did in places like New York City, in New Jersey, and even in California. | ||
| What do you think Republicans should take away from that? | ||
| And should other candidates besides Trump try their hand at connecting with voters in places that aren't deep red? | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| I think majority parties are not built in deep red or deep blue districts. | ||
| They're built in swing districts and districts that you can cross over that happen to be in the other party. | ||
| And that's how you build a majority. | ||
| That's how you keep a majority. | ||
| And, you know, it's important for Republicans that were in districts that Kamala Harris won to be talking to their voters. | ||
| There's a bunch of those folks. | ||
| There's also a bunch of folks that are Democrats in districts that Trump won, and Republicans need to go after those districts pretty hard, too. | ||
| So I think that's how you win majorities is by going after the swing districts and the other party's districts. | ||
| You don't win it focusing on just your base. | ||
| Yeah, Doug, this is new for Democrats, though, in this era of politics. | ||
| We didn't see that much happening. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Go ahead, Steve. | ||
| Democrats seem to be the coastal elites who only talk to each other. | ||
| So it's good to see them going to the South and other places. | ||
| And, you know, a two-party system strong for our country. | ||
| And, you know, people need to have options and choices. | ||
| Yeah, Doug, how should Democrats talk to voters in red states? | ||
| What is your advice? | ||
| It's really simple. | ||
| I mean, look, it's been fascinating to me to listen to all the Democrat pundits out there these days saying, oh, Democrats in 24, we didn't talk about the kitchen table issues. | ||
| We didn't talk about the facts and numbers behind the economy and that people were hurting and that they needed higher wages. | ||
| They needed to bring manufacturing in. | ||
| We needed health care for everyone that can afford it. | ||
| We need to get good, affordable health care for folks. | ||
| We got away from the very kitchen table issues that, quite frankly, won me the election in Alabama in 2017. | ||
| And now folks are beginning to see that those are the issues that resonate. | ||
| Yeah, I know that the cultural issues have always played a role, particularly in the South. | ||
| But at the end of the day, you know, it was funny that talking to people, I reminded folks that Tip O'Neill used to say all politics was local. | ||
| And that's still true, although there's some national politics in it. | ||
| But at the end of the day, all politics is personal. | ||
| And that's where I think that we can win in these races. | ||
| Like in Alabama, you're going to see some very competitive elections coming up in Alabama, in Georgia, in Mississippi, not as much in Mississippi this year. | ||
| They're off year, but in Florida, Tennessee, because we're going to be talking to people. | ||
| We're going to talk about issues that are important to them because we know that all politics is personal to them and their family, not in a selfish way, because it's personal to them and to their communities and well. | ||
| Those are the issues that I think Democrats have to get back to in places like the South and the Midwest and others that have kind of drifted away from the Democrats over the last 20, 30 years. | ||
| Steve, I've got a feeling that you remember the 2018 cycle pretty well. | ||
| That was the last time Republicans had a trifecta in Washington. | ||
| And Republicans lost the House that year where the future of the ACA and concerns about health care dominated that campaign cycle. | ||
| What parallels can you draw heading into 2026? | ||
| And what advice do you have? | ||
| Well, I mean, health care was certainly a big issue in the 2018 cycle. | ||
| And, you know, it may be an issue this year. | ||
| I think the issue of 2026 is going to be affordability and affordability of the American dream. | ||
| And it sure seems to be going that direction. | ||
| And I think Republicans need to get back to those talking points. | ||
| You know, when President Trump was in that McDonald's, he did the best job of the whole campaign on that one day of talking about affordability and how he was going to bring back affordability and the American dream. | ||
| And we need to stay focused on the things we need to do and deliver on those and then, you know, make sure that we talk about them. | ||
| So it's a real issue. | ||
| Interest rates are starting to come down. | ||
| So, you know, hopefully we'll see pricing continue to come down and they'll have a lot to talk about. | ||
| As Senator Jones said, there's a lot of green between here and the November elections next year. | ||
| But if Republicans deliver on affordability and talk about affordability, I think they're going to be able to hold the House majority. | ||
| And the Senate map, you know, doesn't look as bad as it originally looked like it might be because of some retirements where we have winnable seats in places like New Hampshire. | ||
| And so I think there are opportunities to even expand the majority in the Senate this year. | ||
| The former senator and congressman shared no prior working relationship but still delivered on the ceasefire mission. | ||
| And let's now turn to two current congressmen who know each other well. | ||
| Nebraska Republican Don Bacon and California Democrat Roe Cona. | ||
| They served together on the House Armed Services Committee and told me about their respectful relationship even when they disagree. | ||
| We traveled to Mexico together, had a great time, and we want to strengthen our relations with Mexico. | ||
| Had a great time traveling with Roe and we've also worked on some legislation. | ||
| I find you may not agree with a Democrat on everything, but you can find areas where you do agree. | ||
| And that's where you work together. | ||
| And we both agree that tariffs are a tax, a tax on consumers, and it's the most aggressive tax of all, if you ask me. | ||
| So we've worked well together on that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Roe? | |
| Well, I've always respected Don Bacon's service to our country. | ||
| I mean, 30 years as a general in the military. | ||
| So he chairs the subcommittee on advanced technology, emerging technology, and I've been ranking member. | ||
| And we've had a great relationship. | ||
| He asked really smart questions, especially in classified briefings. | ||
| I said, it's nice to be with a member who knows what they're talking about. | ||
| And we've had areas of common ground, areas on tariffs where we've been opposed to this coffee tariff. | ||
| I think our joint bill made a difference. | ||
| And now the president has said that he's not going to have these tariffs on coffee. | ||
| And we've worked together in going to build a better relationship with Mexico. | ||
| So bipartisanship can actually work and get things done. | ||
| I mean, your committee, the Armed Services Committee, is that more bipartisan than some of the others in the House? | ||
| There's 20 committees in the House. | ||
| And I think the Defense or the Armed Services Committee is the most bipartisan one, in my view. | ||
| And I've had a chance to look at them all to some degree. | ||
| And we're on the cyber subcommittee, and it has been a great partnership. | ||
| There's really, I can't think of a thing that we've disagreed on on the cyber subcommittee. | ||
| It's not really a Republican or Democrat view on cyber. | ||
| It's about protecting our country. | ||
| And so we've been, I think, a great team. | ||
| And I would say, you know, the Republicans and Democrats like on our subcommittee have been great. | ||
| Lawmakers bonding over their work in Congress. | ||
| We love to see it. | ||
| I want to move on now to some close friends who come from opposite ideologies. | ||
| Conservative legal scholar Robert George and former independent presidential candidate Cornell West. | ||
| They are co-authors of Truth Matters, a dialogue on fruitful disagreement in an age of division. | ||
| I asked them their advice for conversations during the holiday season in a very polarized time. | ||
| Well, I mean, one, we ought to just commit ourselves to love and justice, not hatred and revenge. | ||
| One of the wonderful things that I've been able to experience with my very dear brother, Robert George, is that I love the brother when he's right. | ||
| I love him when he's wrong. | ||
| I love him when he's wrestling in his quest for truth. | ||
| And it comes the other way because love cuts much deeper than just finite opinions or political analysis. | ||
| We revel in each other's humanity and we had to begin with that deeper moral and spiritual starting point before we even get into all of the contentiousness of politics. | ||
| And that takes a lot of courage. | ||
| And I mean, as a Christian, it means I can't do it by myself. | ||
| I need some help. | ||
| I need some grace as well. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Robert? | |
| So true. | ||
| Everything that Brother Cornell said is absolutely true. | ||
| Let me remind our viewers that not everything has to be about politics. | ||
| Now, that doesn't mean that we have to shy away from political discussions. | ||
| The Greeks had a kind of, the ancient Greeks had a concept that Cornell's fond of invoking, and I am too, called parhesia. | ||
| That's translated as frank speech or plain speech. | ||
| We need to be able to talk plainly with each other, including about points of politics or ethics or culture on which we disagree. | ||
| But not everything has to be about politics. | ||
| And we don't assess and judge each other exclusively on the basis of politics. | ||
| So when we're sitting around the Thanksgiving table or Christmas or Hanukkah, whenever we've got the family together, we don't have to lead with politics and with our differences of opinion and our debates about political issues. | ||
| There are lots of other things in our lives that we can talk about, we can share points on which we agree or have shared commitments or shared relationships and devotions, our children and our grandchildren and so forth, our parents. | ||
| So let's begin by talking about those sorts of things. | ||
| Now, it doesn't mean we can't get to politics. | ||
| Eventually, we should be willing to get to points on which we disagree, including political points on which we disagree. | ||
| But let's remember we human beings are complex critters. | ||
| Politics is part of our lives. | ||
| It's not the whole of our lives. | ||
| Well, I do notice that both of you happen to conveniently be able to avoid actually coming to Washington to sit at this table with me. | ||
| I'll give you the holiday as the excuse. | ||
| But when you look at Washington, whether it's the White House or Congress or even the judicial branch, what is your advice for the people that are in politics, our leaders in politics here in Washington? | ||
| Is there something when they go back to those family tables for the holidays that they can bring back to D.C. to try to foster a less divisive environment? | ||
| Well, I think, one, we just have to recommit ourselves in a serious way to integrity. | ||
| One of the things I love about Brother Robbie is he says what he means. | ||
| He means what he says. | ||
| He doesn't pose. | ||
| He doesn't posture. | ||
| He's not fake. | ||
| He's not phony. | ||
| There's nothing fraudulent about it. | ||
| When he says something, he means it. | ||
| Whereas, of course, most politicians these days, you know, they got to check and see what the polls say before they give us a sense of what their opinions are. | ||
| You can't trust them. | ||
| They don't have integrity. | ||
| They're tied to money. | ||
| They're tied to the next election. | ||
| And so you end up with a lack of character. | ||
| Herodotus and Ralph Waldo Emerson said character is destiny. | ||
| What they meant was character is that which endures, the constancy that the great Jane Austen talks about in her novels. | ||
| How do you hold on to who you are as you grow, as you develop? | ||
| And it's hard to find politicians like that in both parties. | ||
| Not just both, but parties across the board. | ||
| We've got more than two in the country. | ||
| We've got to keep that in mind. | ||
| Robert, your advice for your friends here in D.C. | ||
| Well, again, I have to say amen to what Brother Cornell just said. | ||
| At the end of the day, it's a matter of character. | ||
| It's a matter of integrity. | ||
| It's a matter of doing to the best of your lights, and we're all fallible. | ||
| We all get some things wrong, doing what's right. | ||
| And one thing that is right is treating other people with dignity and respect, even if we disagree with them. | ||
| Even if we disagree with them on the points that matter most to us, on our most cherished beliefs, our identity-forming beliefs, even if we disagree with the way they lead their lives or the political party they belong to or the ideology they embrace, we have to treat them with dignity and respect and recognize they are fellow human beings, made in the image and likeness of God, bearers of profound, inherent, and equal dignity. | ||
| When we forget that, we can quickly demonize each other. | ||
| And there's so much of that going on in our politics today. | ||
| The other thing I would say is that people need role models. | ||
| Human beings do. | ||
| This is not unique to the United States of America in 2025 for all of human history and all cultures for anything decent to happen. | ||
| People need role models. | ||
| They need to see people doing it. | ||
| We need more people like, for example, two former late, Alas no longer with us, Supreme Court justices, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia. | ||
| Now, both of these justices were people of profound conviction. | ||
| Ruth Bader Ginsburg had views. | ||
| Antonin Scalia had views. | ||
| They weren't shy about saying what those views were. | ||
| They were willing to stand up and speak out and fight for what they believed in. | ||
| And so often what they believed in put them at odds with each other politically and constitutionally and legally. | ||
| And yet they could be dear, beloved friends, treating each other with respect, learning from each other, engaging each other in productive ways when they disagreed. | ||
| We need more of that. | ||
| I can think of other examples. | ||
| You can think of Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neill. | ||
| Here are a couple of guys who were on opposite sides of the political fence. | ||
| Reagan is president. | ||
| O'Neill is Speaker of the House. | ||
| Two of the most powerful people in the world, not only in the nation, in the world. | ||
| But despite their differences, which they could fight over very aggressively, they respected each other. | ||
| They honored each other. | ||
| They befriended each other. | ||
| They were good friends. | ||
| There's no reason, even across the lines of ideological division, that people cannot respect and even love each other. | ||
| And that's so important in families where there are disagreements, to love each other, respect each other, honor each other as bearers of inherent and equal dignity. | ||
| And last but not least, I was joined one week ago by two first-term senators that hit it off during orientation and have become close friends. | ||
| Pennsylvania Democratic Senator John Fetterman and Alabama Republican Senator Katie Britt told me about what brought them together. | ||
| I walk in and, you know, and there was a guy bigger than me. | ||
| Like, I felt like Petite. | ||
| I walked up to him. | ||
| He sounds a little bigger than you. | ||
| Oh, I mean, he's a gigantic man. | ||
| And he's just turned out to be like the nicest, nicest guy. | ||
| I mean, truly, truly. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And that guy is my husband, or better known as the big unit. | |
| Yeah, the big unit. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The big unit. | |
| So he, you know, we were trying to trade my. | ||
| But no, but seriously, you know. | ||
|
unidentified
|
John always puts it at a trademark when we have a text with Wesley and Giselle and John and I and Wesley Unitian. | |
| He always trademarks it. | ||
| John does when he calls him the big unit. | ||
| But no, truly, they're both lovely people. | ||
| And immediately, you know, during the orientation, it just kind of clicked. | ||
| And then it just kind of grew from there and there and there. | ||
| And then, you know, when I checked into Walter Reed, you know, she visited me as well, too. | ||
| And then that's been consistent over the last three years. | ||
| And we try to find to work together on, you know, like a political, but on a personal level, it just reminds people that we all don't hate each other. | ||
| know we're all just you know like we're actually a favorite people and he'll stop by my office or you know we'll just kind of so um it's not as it's not as i mean it is very polarized town but but at least in this case i don't know Yeah, and that's it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Like we, you know, John said it best. | |
| I mean, we walked into orientation and we immediately connected both with Wesley and John and Giselle and I and even Wesley and Giselle in the spouse program during orientation. | ||
| You know, this whole thing, you kind of walk into the United States Senate and regardless of what you did before, there's so much to do and to learn. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And when we got to our very first office, John and I were stuck in the basement of Dirksen together. | |
| It was so glamorous being a senator. | ||
| That was part of my undoing. | ||
| So I'm like, oh my God, I'm in a basement and it's terrible. | ||
| I hope you've enjoyed this special edition of Ceasefire, where we really try to stay true to our goal of bridging the political divide. | ||
| That's all the time we have for this episode. | ||
| Happy holidays, everyone. | ||
| And join us next time as I sit down with former West Virginia Independent Senator Joe Manchin and former Republican Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy. | ||
| A reminder, Ceasefire is also available as a podcast. | ||
| Find us in all the usual places. | ||
| I'm Dasha Burns. | ||
| And remember, whether or not you agree, keep talking and keep listening. | ||
|
unidentified
|
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